Amongst Europeans, Brussels is best known as the home
of the EU, which, given recent developments, is something of a poisoned
chalice. But in fact, the EU neither dominates nor defines Brussels,
merely forming one layer of a city that has become, in postwar years at
least, a thriving, cosmopolitan metropolis. It's a vibrant and
fascinating place, with architecture and museums to rank among the best
of Europe's capitals, not to mention a superb restaurant scene and an
energetic nightlife. Moreover, most of the key attractions are crowded
into a centre that is small enough to be absorbed over a few days, its
boundaries largely defined by a ring of boulevards known as the "petit
ring".
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All prices are given in euros , the new currency that replaced the
Belgian Franc on January 1, 2002. The exchange rate is fixed at one Euro
to 40.34 Belgian Francs.
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The layout of this city centre embodies historic class divisions. For
centuries, the ruling class has lived in the Upper Town, an area of wide
boulevards and grand mansions which looks down on the maze of tangled
streets that characterize the Lower Town, traditionally home to
shopkeepers and workers. This fundamental class divide has in recent
decades been further complicated by discord between Belgium's two main
linguistic groups, the Walloons (the French-speakers) and the Flemish (basically
Dutch-speakers). As a cumbersome compromise, the city is Belgium's only
officially bilingual region and by law all road signs, street names and
virtually all published information must be in both languages, even
though French-speakers make up nearly eighty percent of Brussels'
population. As if this was not complex enough, since the 1960s the city
has become much more ethnically diverse, with communities of immigrants
from North Africa, Turkey, the Mediterranean and Belgium's former
colonies as well as European administrators, diplomats and business
people, now comprising a quarter of the population.
Each of these communities leads a very separate, distinct existence and
this is reflected in the number and variety of affordable ethnic
restaurants. But, even without these, Brussels would still be a
wonderful place to eat : its gastronomic reputation rivals that of Paris
and London, and though restaurants are rarely inexpensive, there is
great-value food to be had in many of the bars . The bars themselves can
be sumptuous, basic, traditional or very fashionable - and one of the
city's real pleasures. Another pleasure is shopping : Belgian chocolates
and lace are de rigueur, but it's also hard to resist the charms of the
city's designer clothes shops and antique markets, not to mention the
numerous specialist shops devoted to anything and everything from comic
books to costume jewellery.
Many of the city's best bars and restaurants are dotted round the city
centre, within the petit ring, and this is where you'll find the key
sights. The Lower Town centres on the Grand-Place, one of Europe's most
magnificent squares, boasting a superb ensemble of Baroque guildhouses
and an imposing Gothic town hall, while the Upper Town weighs in with a
splendid cathedral and a fine art museum of international standing, the
Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts. Few visitors stray beyond the petit ring,
but there are delights here too, principally in St Gilles and Ixelles ,
two communes (or boroughs) just to the south of the centre, whose
streets are studded with fanciful Art Nouveau residences, including the
old home and studio of Victor Horta, the style's prime exponent.
The City
Visitors to Brussels are often surprised by the raw vitality of the city
centre . It's not neat and tidy, and many of the old tenement houses are
shabby and bruised, but there's a buzz about the place that's hard to
resist and it's here you'll find the majority of the city's sights and
attractions, restaurants and bars. The centre is also surprisingly
compact, sitting neatly within the rough pentagon of boulevards that
enclose it - the petit ring - which follows the course of the fourteenth-century
city walls, running from place Rogier in the north round to Porte de Hal
in the south. The city centre is itself divided into two main areas. The
larger, westerly portion comprises the Lower Town, built for the working
and lower-middle classes and fanning out from the Grand-Place, while up
on the hill to the east lies the much smaller Upper Town, the
traditional home of the Francophile upper classes. Broadly speaking, the
boundary between the two zones follows the busy boulevard which swings
through the centre under several names - Berlaimont, L'Impératrice and
L'Empereur.
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The Brussels area telephone code is 02, but note that it has to be
dialled even for local calls. From abroad, omit the "0".
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The Grand-Place , with its exquisite guildhouses and town hall, is the
unquestionable centre of Brussels, a focus for tourists and locals alike.
It's surrounded by the Lower Town , whose cramped and populous quarters
are bisected by a major north-south boulevard, variously named Adolphe
Max, Anspach and Lemonnier. The Lower Town is at its most beguiling to
the northwest of the Grand-Place: the area is a cobweb of quaint, narrow
lanes and tiny squares, on one of which stands the sturdy church of Ste
Catherine , while on another sits the beautiful St Jean Baptiste au
Béguinage . By comparison, the streets to the north of the Grand-Place
are of less immediate appeal, with dreary rue Neuve , a pedestrianized
street of mainstream shops and department stores, leading up to the
clumping skyscrapers that surround the place Rogier and the Gare du Nord
. This is an uninviting part of the city, but relief is at hand in the
precise if bedraggled Habsburg symmetries of the place des Martyrs and
at the Belgian Comic Strip Centre, the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée
. To the south of the Grand-Place lie the old working-class streets of
the Marolles district and the depressed and predominantly immigrant area
in the vicinity of the Gare du Midi .
Quite different in feel from the rest of the city centre, the Upper Town
is a self-consciously planned, more monumental quarter, with statuesque
buildings lining wide boulevards and squares. Appropriately, it's the
home of the Belgian parliament and government departments, formal parks
and the Palais Royal . More promisingly, it also accommodates the
Cathedral , a fine Gothic edifice with wonderful stained-glass windows,
the superb Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts , arguably Belgium's best
collection of fine art, and some of the city's swishest shops clustered
around the charming place du Grand Sablon . There's also the
preposterous bulk of the Palais de Justice , which lords it over the
rest of the city, commanding views that on clear days reach way across
the suburbs.
Brussels by no means ends with the petit ring. Léopold II pushed the
city limits out beyond the course of the old walls, grabbing land from
the surrounding communes to create the irregular boundaries that survive
today. To the east , he sequestered a rough rectangle of land where he
laid out Parc Léopold and across which he ploughed two wide boulevards -
Belliard and La Loi. These were designed to provide an imperial approach
to the Parc du Cinquantenaire , whose self-glorifying and over-sized
monuments were erected to celebrate Belgium's golden jubilee and now
house three large if rather turgid museums - the pick is the Musées
Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire . The boulevards were soon colonized by the
city's bourgeoisie, but in the last few years they have been displaced
by the brash concrete and glass tower blocks of the EU Quarter , among
which is the flashy new European Parliament .
South of the city centre is the animated and cosmopolitan district of St
Gilles , while neighbouring Ixelles has become the favoured hangout of
the arty and the cool, its streets nurturing a handful of designer
stores and a growing number of chic bars and restaurants. These two
communes also boast much of the best of the city's Art Nouveau
architecture. Ixelles is bisected by avenue Louise , a prosperous
corridor that's actually considered part of the city centre - and is
home to the enjoyable Musée Constantin Meunier .
Further out, to the southwest of the city centre, lies the gritty suburb
of Anderlecht , famous for its soccer team and also worth a visit for
its Gueuze brewery and the fascinating Erasmus house, one-time residence
of Desiderius Erasmus, who lodged here in 1521. Adjacent to this area is
Koekelberg , the site of the Basilique du Sacré Coeur, another whopping
pile built by Léopold II. Also nearby is the commune of Jette , site of
the Musée René Magritte . To the north of the city centre, beyond the
tough districts of St Josse and Schaerbeek, is Laeken , city residence
of the Belgian royal family, and Heysel , with its notorious soccer
stadium and the Atomium , a clumsy leftover from the 1958 World Fair.
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In Brussels, the languages of the French- and Flemish-speaking
communities have parity. This means that every instance of the written
word, from road signs to the yellow pages, has to appear in both
languages. Visitors soon adjust, but on arrival this can be very
confusing, especially with regard to the names of the city's three main
train stations: Bruxelles-Nord (in Flemish it's Brussel-Noord),
Bruxelles-Centrale (Brussel-Centraal), and, most bewildering of the lot,
Bruxelles-Midi (Brussel-Zuid). Note that for simplicity we've used the
French version of street names and sights.
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Vacation Rentals in Brussels |
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from $69.54
USD