Belgium

By Kevin LaCroix on February 10, 2025

The D&O Diary was on assignment in Europe last week, with several stops in the storied kingdom of Belgium. It was a first-time ever visit for me to the country that has been called “the Crossroads of Europe.”

I know that right now, many readers are thinking, why Belgium? There certainly are many other flashier destinations in Europe. The seed for the idea of visiting Belgium was planted long ago, during one of many prior visits to the departures lounge at St. Pancras train station in London, while waiting to board the Eurostar train to Paris. The departing train board lists all of the Eurostar train destinations. More than once, it caught my eye that among the available destinations is the Belgium capital of Brussels, an observation I tucked away for further consideration at a later time. The nascent idea of perhaps taking the Eurostar train to visit Brussels took shape last summer when I read Bart Van Loo’s excellent book, The Burgundians: A Vanished Empire, which tells the interesting tale of how several generations of a French aristocratic family led by the Dukes of Burgundy tried but failed to establish a separate kingdom based in Flanders and Brabant, but succeeded in laying the groundwork for what would become in more modern times the Low Countries. Much of the action in the book is set in the-then fabulously wealthy cities of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Brussels. The book sparked an urge to see what remains in these cities from this fascinating period.

Our first stop in the country was the capital city of Brussels. It is a short trip via the Eurostar from London to Brussels; the trip is so short (about 2 1/2 hours) that it is a little surprising to quickly find yourself in a place where people are alternately (and from my perspective, unpredictably) speaking French or Dutch.

Soon after dropping our bags at our hotel, we found ourselves standing in the city’s opulent central square, the Grand-Place (or Grote Markt, as it is known in Dutch), facing the flamboyant Town Hall. We were fortunate that the pleasant weather we had enjoyed in London followed us to Brussels, and the city’s central square absolutely shone in the sunshine.

On the side of the Grand-Place opposite the Town Hall is the building known as the King’s House, as well a row of Baroque guildhalls. The Grand-Place was completed in the 17th century, but it was almost completely destroyed by Louis XIV’s French army in the 1690s. It has been rebuilt and renovated multiple times since then. The Grand-Place has been designated a UNESCO world heritage site.

Just a few blocks away from the Grand-Place in the city’s Old Town are the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, a series of indoor shopping arcades built in the 19th century. The galleries, like virtually all of the city’s Old Town, are full of shops selling waffles, frites, moules, chocolate, and beer. We did have a very pleasant lunch in the galleries.

This is the street behind our hotel. The Old Town is full of quiet, pedestrianized, atmospheric streets. More shops selling more chocolate, frites, moules, and beer than you would ever believe. The skies were clear and sunny, but it was still pretty chilly.

One of the city’s best known landmarks is the Manneken Pis statute, which is a roughly two-foot tall statute of a boy urinating. I had set my expectations as low as possible for this attraction, and yet I was still underwhelmed. The area around the statute was quite crowded as tour groups jockeyed to take selfies with the statue. I would rank the experience of seeing the statue right up there with seeing the Merlion statue in Singapore and the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, on the long list of disappointing tourist sites.

As is often the case, the Manneken was dressed up in a costume on the day we visited. There is in fact a museum nearby of the many costumes the Manneken has worn over the years. We did not visit the museum. I will say that the statute is surprisingly small.

There are numerous legends meant to explain the statute and why it has become a symbol of the city, including one that involves an infant boy saving the locals by peeing on the invading enemy. I favor the explanation of the reason why the statue has become so famous and even symbolic is that it shows that the locals don’t take themselves (or anyone else) too seriously.

The good citizens of Brussels have a healthy appreciation of the absurdity that their internationally known symbol is a statute of a boy peeing. Copies of the Manneken appear everywhere around the city. I am sure that many of you will be surprised to learn that my wife and I did *not* purchase a copy of the Manneken to bring home with us (although there certainly were many options to buy one).

This interestingly named café is located cater corner across the street from the Manneken.

There is a lot of great street art in Brussels, much of it relating to the comic book character Tintin, the boy journalist who features in the numerous illustrated books written by the Belgian author and cartoonist Hergé. My wife and I both grew up reading the stories of Tintin and his dog Snowy (and in fact we read them to our children as they grew up as well), so we sought out the Tintin murals, including this one featuring Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock. We also went to the Comic Art Museum, which features a lot of Tintin art and is a lot of fun.

This is the Brussels Bourse, the former home of the Brussels stock exchange. The last securities traders left the building in 2015. It is now an events space, and also — in a thoroughly Belgian transformation — it now houses the “Belgian Beer Experience.” (By the way, the Belgian beer is extraordinarily good.)

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts includes an Old Masters collection that features the works of Flemish artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rogier van der Weyden, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling. It also has a separate, absolutely fascinating gallery featuring the life and works of the Belgian painter René Magritte.

The museum has a particularly fine collection of paintings by the Bruegels, father and son. I have always particularly liked this painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus. It was great to see the original. (That is Icarus, splashing into the water, just behind the ship in the right-hand corner.)

After our visit to the art museum, we were fortunate to stumble upon an absolutely fascinating lunch spot, the Chicon Farsi, located on the Rue de Rollebeek, that billed itself as serving Iranian/Belgian fusion food. We enjoyed these unusual but tasty sandwiches served on homemade Barbari bread. An interesting, excellent lunch experience,

During my visit last summer to Riga (where there is a lot of Art Deco architecture), I discovered a fascination for the Art Deco style. Brussels is quite well-known for its Art Deco buildings. Art Deco architecture flourished in Brussels after World War I under the influence of the Belgian architect Victor Horta. (The Comic Book Museum I mentioned above is housed in a classic Art Deco building that Horta designed.) And so one morning as part of our effort to get to know Brussels better we took an extensive self-guided architectural tour of the Saint-Gilles and Châtelain neighborhoods. We did manage to find many of the buildings — as reflected in the pictures above and below — but the tour turned out to be more of an arduous experience than we anticipated. My wife’s FitBit informed us that we walked 26,000+ steps — over eleven miles.

Right at the point where exhaustion and hunger had just about defeated us, we managed to find a simple but wonderful lunch place, called L’Epicerie–Cuisine du March, located on Rue de Page, a couple of blocks from the Place du Châtelain. Basically, it was just this lady’s kitchen with six tables set up in her front room. Lunch consisted of the plat du jour, which in this case was a sort of stew made with lentils, rice, leeks, onions, garlic, sausages, and a host of spices. It was absolutely terrific (it might have helped that we were both half-starved as well.) The architectural tour itself was interesting but the high point of the day — and one of the high points of the entire visit to Brussels — was the unexpectedly wonderful lunch that we enjoyed.

From Brussels, we were off for a daytrip to the Flemish city of Ghent, the formerly flourishing port city located at the confluence of the Leie and Scheldt rivers. The city had its heyday under the Counts of Flanders and the Dukes of Burgundy during the 14th and 15th centuries, after which the city suffered a long, slow decline. The city’s long years as a backwater means that many of the structures from its prime have been preserved. It is a wonderful little jewel of a place.

One of Ghent’s more impressively preserved buildings is its Gravensteen (the Castle of the Counts) which served as the home and military stronghold of the Counts of Flanders from the 12th to the 14th centuries.

Ghent has a number of fine old Gothic church buildings, including St. Nicholas church (over my left shoulder), largely built in the 13th century, although extensively added onto since then. Just behind the church is the 14th century Belfry of Ghent, which stands an impressive 300 feet tall. You can tell from how bundled up I am in this picture what the weather was like during our visit.

Just behind the Belfry is St. Bavo’s cathedral, which was largely completed in the 16th century. The church boasts a 292-foot bell tower. It is also the home of the masterpiece artwork, the Ghent Alterpiece, shown in the next picture.

The primary purpose of our visit to Ghent was to see the Ghent Altarpiece, which is also known as the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. The huge, complex work, which was completed in 1432, was painted by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. It has been called the “first major oil painting.” It is a masterpiece of color and clarity. The detail is almost unbelievable. The church fathers at St. Bavo have done a very good job displaying and explaining the work; the presentation truly enhances the experience of seeing it. The work is undergoing an extensive restoration process; the panels on the bottom row have been restored, while the originals of the top panels are now being restored at the art museum in Ghent. (Later in the afternoon we spent a long time in a viewing room at the art museum watching the technicians meticulously working on the top “God” panel.) The art work has a long and storied history; among other things parts of it have been stolen over the years, and it was looted both by Napoleon and Hitler, before being restored to Ghent. Seeing the altar piece was a truly special experience, well worth the trip to visit the city.

Ghent really is an extraordinarily beautiful city. This picture shows the view across the river from our hotel, right on the River Leie, just before its junction with the Scheldt. (We stayed in the Hotel Harmony, a pleasant, clean hotel in a great location.)

We were in Ghent just long enough to have one excellent meal at the De Stokerij restaurant, in the Patershol neighborhood in Ghent, the “culinary heart” of the city. This hearty stew of Pork Cheeks and spices was just the thing to warm us up after a chilly, windy day in Ghent.

After Ghent, we took the short trip to the Flemish city of Bruges, famous for its canals, cobbled streets, and medieval buildings. Like Ghent, Bruges had its Golden Age during the 12th to 15th century, but wars and changing economic circumstances caused the city to decline, which accelerated after the Scheldt River began to silt up. Again, like Ghent, the long, slow decline meant that many of structures from the city’s heyday are preserved.

Bruges is a beautiful city with beautiful buildings but the best reason to visit is just to see and walk along its many canals. It was unfortunately a cold, windy day the day we visited, but we still managed to see quite a bit of the canals.

Another view of the canals. One of my college classmates had been an exchange student in Bruges while she was in high school. I still remember her florid, romantic description of the city’s canals. Her descriptions were so vivid, they have stayed with me all of these years; it has been one of my life-long dreams to see the canals in Bruges. They did not disappoint.

Bruges has a rich history, which is well captured in the city’s ornate Town Hall. The decorations are from the 19th century but the colorful murals provide a detailed history of the city.

One of the city’s great treasures is this statue of the Madonna and Child by Michelangelo (known as the Madonna of Bruges). It is located in a side chapel of the Church of Our Lady.

The Church of Our Lady in Bruges also contains the tomb of Charles the Bold, the last of the great Dukes of Burgundy and a historical figure with whom I have always been fascinated. He was a great patron of the arts with distinctive imperial aspirations, but after a disastrous military defeat at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, he became separated from his troops, and his body was found two days later, “a naked corpse in the snow, gnawed by wild animals.”

Bruges also has a compact but very fine art museum, featuring the works of artists from Flanders and Brabant, including works by Hieronymus Bosch (the picture above shows a detail from one of his paintings of the Last Judgment).

Here’s a nightime view of Bruges’s medieval 272 foot tall belfry. The nightime view is higher contrast than the picture I took during the cloudy daytime.

This is a picture of dessert. I need to explain. We were in Bruges on my wife’s birthday. To celebrate, we had a special meal at the Restaurant Patrick Devos, located on a quiet street in the city’s Old Town. We had a four-course meal with a wine pairing for each course. It was an absolutely splendid meal — truly, one of the best meals I have ever enjoyed in my entire life. The food was terrific, the service was polished without being oppressive, each wine perfectly complemented each course. We were so preoccupied enjoying the meal that I forgot to take any pictures of the various courses before the dessert. So this picture of the dessert course will have to stand in for the entire meal. The meal might have been the high point of the entire trip. So — Happy Birthday to Mrs. D&O Diary.

For our last stop in Belgium, we made the short trip from Bruges to Antwerp. Although Antwerp has a lovely, interesting old town, it is quite a bit different from Ghent and Bruges. For starters, Antwerp is still one of the busiest ports in Europe. It is a also big, industrial city, albeit one with an interesting history and interesting landmarks.

Like Brussels, Antwerp has a big central square, the Grote Markt. The main feature is the city’s 16th century Renaissance Town Hall. There was a noisy wedding party exiting from the hall when we arrived.

Antwerp’s Grote Markt also features a row of ornate guildhalls. The buildings are largely 19th and 20th century reproductions.

This is the Het Steen castle, a medieval fortress built for the Dukes of Brabant on Antwerp’s river front along the Scheldt River. Much of the riverfront area around the castle is pretty derelict. The riverfront has been disused since the port operations were moved further upstream.

I really have no earthly idea what is going on in this statutory ensemble. (I am told this is a statue of Lange Wapper, a giant who according to medieval folklore used to terrorize the city’s residents.)

This is the nave of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp. It is famous among other things for the series of paintings by Rubens displayed in the church. (Rubens lived in Antwerp most of his life; his house is one of the city’s main attractions, although it is currently closed for renovations.) In addition to the Rubens paintings in the Antwerp church, we also saw paintings by Rubens in several of the art galleries we visited during the course of our Belgium trip. After this extended exposure to Rubens, it is my considered opinion that I really don’t like Rubens’s paintings. All of those chubby cherubs and plump women. All way too grandiose and overdone for me. I tell you all this because it costs ten euros to enter the Antwerp church; if, like me, you aren’t all that keen on Rubens, you can skip the church and save the ten euros.

This is the courtyard of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. One of the main reasons I wanted to visit Antwerp was to see this museum. The museum houses the residence and workshop of the 16th century printer, Christophe Plantin, and his son-in-law, Jan Moretus. The family maintained the printing business in these joined buildings from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The museum’s collection includes not only an impressive display of printing presses, but also dye casts for font making, bookbinding materials, and all of the other instruments of the industrial aspects of bookmaking. The museum also has an astonishing variety of printed works, including books, maps, etchings, calendars, almanacs, public documents, and religious materials. The museum’s displays do an excellent job of showing how important a knowledge of languages (including not only French and Dutch, but English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Old Syriac) enabled the family to become bookmakers to the world.

This is the a view of the museum’s printing press collection, including, at the far end of the room, two of the oldest existing printing presses. The museum, which is a UNESCO world heritage site, is one of the most interesting museums I have ever been to. It really brings home what an extraordinary development the rise of the printing industry was. And it all happened at the same time that the scientific knowledge, knowledge of the New World, and religious controversy proliferated, making the printing industry one of the key catalysts of modernity.

I have to say, after a few days in Belgium, I have concluded that the country may be underrated, or even undeservedly overlooked. Because of its small size, it is easy to see a lot of the country in a short amount of time. Despite destruction over the years, the country still preserves a wealth of its medieval history. It has a rich trove of architectural treasures, a lot of great food, and even a lot of great beer. A lot of European visitors are in a hurry to rush on to Paris and thus bypass Belgium — in fact, I myself am guilty of having done that. But there are a lot of good reasons to visit.

A few pointers for anyone thinking of visiting Belgium anytime soon. If I had it to do over again, I would allocate more time to Bruges, and allocate relatively less time to Brussels. Brussels is an interesting place, but you can “do” it in a couple of days. Bruges, on the other hand, is just beautiful. I could walk along the canals endlessly. Which brings me to another tip for future Belgium visitors. I would suggest visiting during the warmer months. It was flipping cold when we were in Bruges, which did take away from the enjoyment. I can also imagine how beautiful the canals are in the spring or summer. I guess I will have to go back again in a sunnier, warmer time.

Here’s a bonus picture. If a mapmaker is going to put a windmill on the map, then I am going to walk to see it, even if it means walking two miles into the teeth of a cold, damp wind blowing straight off the North Sea and into my face, as I did in Bruges. A lot of walking on this trip…

I am not done yet. I have one more recommendation to pass along for anyone planning on visiting Brussels soon. We were fortunate to stay at a really lovely hotel in the Old Town called Le Dixseptième. The hotel’s location, equidistant between the Central train station and the Grand-Place, is really ideal, particularly for a first time visitor. The hotel has a quiet, Old World charm. Each of the rooms is named for a Belgian artist — we stayed in the Rik Wouters room (named for the 20th century Belgian impressionist painter). It was a comfortable, pleasant room in a quiet, charming hotel.