Beyond the posh chocs, politics and rowdy stag dos, Brussels has for a long time struggled to find its USP as a city break destination. Best known as the place where warring bureaucrats tussled over Brexit negotiations, the unshowy municipality is often disregarded as a hive of suits and briefcases; a stomping ground for highfalutin members of the European parliament that doesn’t promise much fun. But that’s not the case. Scratch a little deeper beneath its surface and you’ll find an eclectic city bursting with self-confidence and surprises: ornate buildings dripping in history; flea markets stuffed with dazzling art deco treasures; a heady jazz scene that fills its old buildings with sax riffs and ragtime rhythms.
Lately, the city’s increasingly muddled identity has enabled a wave of grassroots artisans and creatives to sidle quietly in, setting out tablecloths at lo-fi seafood joints, claiming old industrial spaces for their experimental art galleries, putting on events in unexpected places. The upswing in no-fly travel has seen more people take the affordable two-hour trip from London on the Eurostar too, the influx of different sorts of people helping to support new sorts of businesses. And for those watching their wallets, this underrated destination is a more viable option than pricier cities such as Paris, Venice and Rome.
So while its medieval Grand Place and the much-treasured Mannekin Pis (a 2ft statue of a small boy peeing) may be the ostensible jewels in its crown, below-the-radar openings are helping to create a new dialogue for this energetically creative city. Here are some of the trends, showing why you should give Brussels a try.
Culture — cutting-edge art shows
Brussels has always had big-hitting fine arts credentials. Its lofty Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (entry £9; fine-arts-museum-be) shelters works by Rubens, Rodin, Gauguin and the surrealist René Magritte. Now, with property prices lower than in Paris, contemporary galleries are choosing to move their collections over to Brussels, but it’s the growing clutch of small, ambitious exhibition spaces that is bringing an eclecticism to this once-staid city.
Galleries such as the Vanhaerents Art Collection (entry £15; vanhaerentsartcollection.com) — founded in the Seventies to showcase works that were considered fierce and radical at the time — and “contemporary cabinet of curiosities” Galila’s P.O.C (entry £17.50; galilaspoc.com) are helping to push the agenda when it comes to both established and emerging artists. Beautiful house museums including the Van Buuren Museum in Uccle (entry £13; museumvanbuuren.be), which has a sculpture labyrinth, and La Maison des Arts (free entry; lamaisondesarts.be), tucked away in a bourgeois 19th-century house, are also leading the way when it comes to alternative exhibition spaces.
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This autumn brings a run of intriguing shows throughout the city. For Invader Rubikcubist at the Millennium Iconoclast Museum of Art (until Jan 8; entry £12; mimamuseum.eu), the urban artist Invader unveils his love letter to the Rubik’s Cube, reproducing the Mona Lisa and other pop culture icons to surprisingly impressive effect using the cubes. Kinshasa (N)tóngá: Between Future and Dust at the Kanal Centre Pompidou (until Nov 20; free entry; kanal.brussels) offers a unique vision of the Congolese capital, exploring the impact that colonialism has had on the architecture of Africa’s third largest city. And Frida Kahlo’s work and life get an unexpected refresh with Miradas de Mujeres at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (Oct 14-Feb 12; entry £9; fine-arts-museum-be). “The Queen of paper art” Isabelle de Borchgrave will reconstruct the decor of Casa Azul, Kahlo’s house and workshop, as well as carpets, trees and dresses, using 4km of bright, bombastic paper and cardboard.
For a different sort of experience, the 13th-century gothic Cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule (entry free; cathedralisbruxellensis.be) is beautiful, with an incredible carved wooden altar, and feels otherworldly if you come while the choir is practising.
Nightlife — jazz, clubs and beer
Brussels’ jazz roots run deep. The city played an important role in the development of the genre, with many New Orleans brass bands performing here in the early 20th century. Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, lived here when he conceived of the unique instrument in 1846.
Many of the city’s old jazz joints have been repurposed, including the internationally renowned Blue Note which, with its stucco ceilings, gilded columns and mirrored walls, is now arguably one of the most beautiful bookstores in Europe, Tropismes (tropismes.com), in the Galeries des Princes. But you’ll still find plenty of places to get your fix. The Music Village (entry from £13; themusicvillage.com), just a stone’s throw from the Grand Place, is a New York-style club that hosts emerging artists as well as international legends. There can be long queues, especially at weekends, but it’s worth the wait for the buzzy, retro vibes. Sounds (some gigs free, some from £10; sounds.brussels/jazz-live-concert), on Rue de la Tulipe, is a similarly iconic institution, where Belgian musicians have been sharing the stage with global performers since the Eighties. Since 2021 it has had new management, a human rights non-profit, Buen Vivir, which engaged a local pianist to develop Sounds Live, the club’s new musical organisation.
For improv in more unusual environs, head to Jazz Station (gigs from £8; jazzstation.be), where concerts are laid on in the surrounds of an old railway station, or take a walk over to L’Archiduc (free entry; archiduc.net), a dazzling art deco bar where the Belgian jazz pioneer Stan Brenders first performed in the smoky glory days of the Fifties.
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The city’s dance music scene grows apace, with a surprisingly strong underground scene whose interesting factions include Cat Club (catclub.be), which hosts itinerant club nights in abandoned buildings, such as a roller rink in a disused supermarket. On Thursday nights the Abattoir — the city’s meat market — turns into the after-work party zone Boeremet (abattoir.be) with DJs and food trucks.
Belgium is rightly famed globally for its beers, but in Brussels you can sample those made just for local consumption, from Trappist beers to kriek, made by adding sour cherries to a slow-fermented lambic. Try countless varieties in a classic beer hall such as Le Roy d’Espagne (roydespagne.be), a brasserie on Grand Place with weirdly eerie decorations — figures hanging from the ceiling and so on. The cosy iconic beer bar Moeder Lambic (moederlambic.com) has 42 beers on tap and 700 in bottles, or there’s La Fleur en Papier Doré (lafleurenpapierdore.be), an old tavern where Magritte and his fellow surrealists used to drink, which is filled with their little mementos, and sometimes hosts theatre and poetry.
The food scene — Japanese is having a moment
The city may be best known for its glut of Michelin-starred restaurants — as well as for that Belgian classic, chips with mayo — but stroll around the cobbled streets and you’ll find enticing offbeat spots that reflect Belgium’s multiculturalism. Beyond the see-and-be-seen cafés in the glass-roofed shopping arcades, the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, and the busy friteries and waffle shops abutting the Grand Place, hip but unpretentious locals gather each evening at bars, alfresco restaurants and cocktail trucks, gobbling up rice paper rolls at neon-lit Vietnamese joints, or treating their taste buds at hole-in-the-wall Nepalese and Malagasy spots.
But it is Japanese food that’s really striding ahead here now. Out of the city centre, among frenetic market stalls overflowing with yams, ochre and plantain, La Paix, near the Abattoir, is a quiet haven of European-Japanese fusion (nine-course tasting menu from £118pp; lapaix.eu). The ceiling of this two Michelin-star restaurant is hung with “lucky” origami cranes. The tasting menus are creative and display clever illusion, with perfectly executed dishes such as crab and coffee soup and marbled squid inspired by Martin’s many research trips to Japan. At the fashionably stark Samouraï (mains from £30; samourai-bruxelles.be), in an unassuming shopping mall near Rue Neuve, the chef Saito Harumi showcases his unrivalled skills in traditional, high-precision sushi-making. Those looking for something more modestly priced, however, should try Hinodeya (mains from £12; hinodeya.jimdofree.com) in the Ixelles area to the south of the city, where seafood hotpots are served in unfussy, homely surrounds.
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Japanese refuseniks might instead plump for the best mussels in town at La Marée (mains from £19; lamaree-sa.com), a family-owned seafood restaurant with tables on the street. Unmissable too is the weekend street food market at Place Flagey, where stalls tout champagne, oysters and crepes.
Shopping
It’s really Antwerp and, to some extent, Ghent that are considered at the forefront of Belgian fashion and design, but Brussels too has great spots for perusing native labels. The concept store Kure (kurebrussels.com) for Belgian, French and Scandi brands; the vast Hunting and Collecting (huntingandcollecting.com), with an exhibition space in the basement; or potter between the hip boutiques of Rue Antoine Dansaert.
Magpie types will adore the antiques shops of the Sablon area, in the oldest part of the city, and unearth treasures while chatting to locals at the daily flea market at Place du Jeu de Balle in the Marolles district.
Where to stay
The Juliana
The elegant Juliana looks out onto Brussels’ poignant Place des Martyrs, below which sits a crypt housing the bodies of more than 400 people who fought in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. Beyond the hotel’s manicured bushes and white neoclassical façade, you’ll find 43 great-looking rooms and suites, each individually and eclectically decorated (oceans of swirling marble here; supersized rose petal wallpaper there) and hung with artworks from the owner Eric Cléton’s private collection. There’s a maximalist feel to the whole space, with intriguing sculptures, objects and paintings throughout, including two squat bronze baboons ceremoniously flanking guests as they enter the building and an OTT floor-to-ceiling marble mosaic of Cleopatra, which took three artists four weeks to piece together. Even more eccentric are the taxidermy puffer fish in glass cabinets and an intricately carved wooden sculpture depicting Theseus and the Minotaur, which used to have pride of place on the Greek cruise liner Stella Oceanis but now keeps guests company as they sip old fashioneds at the bar. Below ground is a petite and steamy wellness centre, while the hotel’s Italian Juliana Restaurant (mains from £22) allows 28-year-old chef Rosa Caldarola to showcase traditional fare with a Belgian twist (the shrimp croquettes are particularly scoffable). The hotel is within striking distance of the Grand Place and the Sablons museum district, and you’d be hard-pressed to find such an interesting luxury hotel so centrally located in any other European city.
Details B&B doubles from £266 (slh.com)
Craves
Having opened this summer, this playful new property by Saar Zafrir is still something of a work in progress (most of the bathrooms still need updating from their beiges and browns and a rooftop terrace is yet to be added). But the 55 burlesque-themed rooms — awash with deep velvets and palm-frond ceiling fans — are nicely moody, and Le Conteur restaurant (mains from £16) downstairs is well worth a visit. Sourcing fish from the North Sea, meat from the Netherlands and spices directly from his home soil in Israel, the consultant chef Ronnie Bush lays on a riot of decadent Levantine cuisine. The silky labneh za’atar and the onglet steak (served with chimichurri made using Bush’s secret family recipe) shine, but the pulpo diablo — grilled octopus glazed in aubergine syrup — is worth the Eurostar trip alone. Book an early or weekday table, unless you’re feeling particularly energetic and fancy being swept up in the weekend party vibe, when guests dance on the tables and free shots are doled out to diners.
Details Doubles from £90 (craves-hotel.com)
Coming soon — Hoxton Brussels
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Inhabiting a brutalist-style tower block that once housed IBM’s Brussels headquarters, the first Belgian outpost for the trendy Hoxton group will have 198 rooms, a bar, restaurant, rooftop terrace and a five-floor co-working space, all encapsulating the hotel group’s typical pared-back retro design. Situated next to the pretty botanical gardens (free entry; gardens.brussels), it’s also within easy walking distance of the Parc Royal de Bruxelles (free entry; gardens.brussels) and Palais Royal (summer only; free entry; monarchie.be), making it ideal for a quick city break.
Details Opening February 2023; room-only from £130; (thehoxton.com)
Lizzie Pook was a guest of the Juliana, Craves and Eurostar, which operates seven trains a day from London St Pancras International to Brussels, with one-way fares starting from £39 (eurostar.com)
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