The Most Beautiful Places in Belgium
18 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Belgium are Belfry of Bruges, Menin Gate, Ypres and Leuven Town Hall. The list covers 18 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Belgium is small and flat, and its beauty is mostly made by people. The medieval cloth trade turned Flemish and Brabantine towns into some of the richest in Europe, and their guilds and councils spent that wealth on belfries, town halls and guildhalls meant to outshine each neighbour. Later the country was an early industrial power and a cradle of Art Nouveau, and its fields carry the memory of Waterloo and the First World War.
The Belfry of Bruges rises over the Markt as the emblem of a city of canals and brick gables, and Brussels' Grand-Place surrounds its Gothic town hall with gilded Baroque guildhouses. Leuven Town Hall is a Brabantine Gothic shrine in stone, its façade covered with statues in niches, while the Gravensteen in Ghent, built by the counts of Flanders in the twelfth century, still has its moat and battlements in the middle of the city. The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries of 1847 were among the first glass-roofed shopping arcades in Europe.
Newer works hold their own. Victor Horta's house in Brussels, now the Horta Museum, shows Art Nouveau at its most fluid, and Antwerp Central Station gives the train a domed hall worthy of a cathedral. The Atomium, built for Expo 58, magnifies an iron crystal into steel spheres joined by tubes. The Historic Boat Lifts of the Canal du Centre raise barges on hydraulic caissons, and Grand-Hornu wraps a colliery in neoclassical arcades. At Ypres the Menin Gate bears the names of tens of thousands of soldiers with no known grave, and the Lion's Mound looks out over the battlefield of Waterloo.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Belfry of Bruges | Bell tower | ✓ |
| 2 | Menin Gate, Ypres | War memorial | |
| 3 | Leuven Town Hall | Palace | |
| 4 | Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries | Covered passageway | |
| 5 | Atomium | Monument | |
| 6 | Grand-Place | Square | ✓ |
| 7 | Lion's Mound | Battlefield | |
| 8 | Gravensteen, Ghent | Castle | |
| 9 | Historic Boat Lifts of the Canal du Centre, La Louvière | Boat lift | |
| 10 | Horta Museum | Museum | |
| 11 | Antwerp Central Station | Railway station | |
| 12 | Grand Hornu | Industrial heritage site | ✓ |
| 13 | Caves of Han-sur-Lesse | Show cave | |
| 14 | Villers Abbey | Abbey | |
| 15 | Royal Greenhouses of Laeken | Botanical garden | |
| 16 | Liège-Guillemins railway station | Railway station | |
| 17 | St Bavo's Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 18 | Hallerbos | Forest |
01 Belfry of Bruges
Belfort van Brugge
Belgium · 1.4 km from Bruges51.208° N 3.225° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Ank Kumar · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Belfry of Bruges has watched over the Markt since around 1240, when the city was one of the great cloth-trading centres of northern Europe.
Did you know? By 1675 the tower already held a carillon of 35 bells, also cast by Melchior de Haze of Antwerp.
02 Menin Gate, Ypres
Menenpoort
Belgium · 25.9 km from Lille50.852° N 2.891° E
FrDr · CC BY-SA 4.0 Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic through the eastern gateway of Ypres is stopped, and buglers step into the vaulted passage to sound the Last Post. They have done so almost without a break since 2 July 1928.
Did you know? In 1927 Australian artist Will Longstaff painted Menin Gate at Midnight, showing ghostly soldiers rising from the fields; it hangs in Canberra.
03 Leuven Town Hall
Stadhuis van Leuven
Belgium · 26.5 km from Brussels50.879° N 4.701° E
Image by HannekeV from Pixabay Leuven Town Hall is late Gothic carried almost to the point of lace.
Did you know? The stone came from quarries of Lede stone, such as De Helle in Dilbeek near Brussels.
04 Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries
Koninklijke Sint-Hubertusgalerijen
Belgium · 2.2 km from Brussels50.848° N 4.355° E
Image by Walkerssk from Pixabay The Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries in Brussels are among the earliest of Europe's grand glazed shopping arcades, and still one of the most graceful. Designed by the architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar and built in 1846–1847, the ensemble was opened by King Leopold I on 20 June 1847.
Did you know? The bend where the King's and Queen's Galleries meet was added on purpose, to break up what would otherwise be a monotonous straight vista.
05 Atomium
Belgium · 6.7 km from Brussels50.895° N 4.341° E
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay The Atomium is a crystal of iron blown up to the scale of a building: nine stainless-steel spheres, each 18 metres across, joined by tubes into the shape of a body-centred cubic unit cell, the arrangement of atoms in iron enlarged roughly 165 billion times.
Did you know? The escalators inside the slanting tubes, about 35 metres long, were once ranked as the longest in Europe.
06 Grand-Place
Belgium · 2 km from Brussels50.847° N 4.353° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by dimitrisvetsikas1969 from Pixabay The Grand-Place, or Grote Markt in Dutch, is the central square of Brussels, and no other square in Europe is so completely enclosed by ornate buildings. It is a fully paved rectangle of about 68 by 110 m, surrounded on all sides by gilded guildhalls, a Gothic town hall and the neo-Gothic King's House.
Did you know? The gilded Saint Michael on the spire, placed in 1454 or 1455, was replaced by a copy in the 1990s; the original is in the City Museum.
07 Lion's Mound
Leeuwenheuvel
Belgium · 18.2 km from Brussels50.678° N 4.405° E
EmDee · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Lion's Mound is the only thing on the Waterloo battlefield that was built to be seen from far away.
Did you know? The cast-iron lion was hoisted onto the summit on 28 October 1826, completing a project designed by the architect Charles Vander Straeten.
08 Gravensteen, Ghent
Belgium · 3.4 km from Ghent51.057° N 3.721° E
Image by waldomiguez from Pixabay In the middle of Ghent, a grey stone fortress rises straight out of its moat: a massive central keep, a crenellated gatehouse and an oval curtain wall studded with two dozen small corner turrets.
Did you know? Philip of Alsace's keep rises about 30 metres, and Krak des Chevaliers is thought to have been one of his models.
09 Historic Boat Lifts of the Canal du Centre, La Louvière
Scheepsliften op het Centrumkanaal
Belgium · 11.4 km from Mons50.471° N 4.095° E
LimoWreck · CC BY-SA 3.0 Between Houdeng-Goegnies and Thieu, on the western edge of the Belgian Centre coalfield, an old canal climbs a slope that no chain of locks could reasonably handle: over a stretch of about seven kilometres the water level changes by some 66 metres.
Did you know? Before committing to the design, Belgian engineers visited the Anderton lift in England, whose hydraulic press burst in 1881 after its wooden foundations settled.
More about Historic Boat Lifts of the Canal du Centre, La Louvière →
10 Horta Museum
Hortamuseum
Belgium · 2.1 km from Brussels50.824° N 4.356° E
Paul Louis · CC BY-SA 4.0 From the street the house on Rue Américaine gives only hints: an asymmetric façade, curling ironwork balconies, windows of different shapes set where the rooms behind them need light. Inside, the building opens into one of the defining interiors of Art Nouveau.
Did you know? The house has two staircases: a grand one for the family and guests, and a separate service stair for the household staff.
11 Antwerp Central Station
Belgium · 0.8 km from Antwerp51.217° N 4.421° E
Image by ClickerHappy from Pixabay Antwerp's main station was built to impress, and it still does. Architect Louis Delacenserie designed the passenger building between 1895 and 1905 as a monumental hall crowned by a dome some 75 metres high, and the people of the city soon named it the spoorwegkathedraal, the railway cathedral.
Did you know? Antwerp's very first station, opened in 1836 as the terminus of the line from Brussels via Mechelen, was a simple wooden building.
12 Grand Hornu
Le Grand-Hornu
Belgium · 7.2 km from Mons50.435° N 3.839° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Jean-Pol GRANDMONT · CC BY 3.0 Grand-Hornu is a coal mine that looks like a Neoclassical palace.
Did you know? The horse-drawn railway that sparked the 1830 riot was only 1,800 metres long, yet it cut the horses needed from 150 to 25.
13 Caves of Han-sur-Lesse
Grotten van Han
Belgium50.125° N 5.189° E
GrottesdeHan · CC BY-SA 3.0 The Caves of Han are the work of a single river. Near the village of Han-sur-Lesse in the Belgian Famenne, the meandering Lesse suddenly disappears into a swallow hole, the Gouffre de Belvaux, and travels under a limestone hill for about a kilometre as the crow flies before reappearing on the other side.
Did you know? Among the treasures pulled from the Lesse is a necklace made of gold discs, now one of the best-known finds from the site.
14 Villers Abbey
Abdij van Villers
Belgium · 19.8 km from Charleroi50.591° N 4.530° E
Image by MarcVanduffel from Pixabay The ruins of Villers Abbey fill a narrow, wooded bend of the Thyle valley in Walloon Brabant: roofless Gothic walls, tall empty windows and the round openings of the church rising among trees, with the cloister, refectory and monastic quarters spread out around them.
Did you know? Juliana of Liège, buried here, campaigned for the feast of Corpus Christi, which Pope Urban IV instituted for the whole Church six years after her death.
15 Royal Greenhouses of Laeken
Koninklijke Serres van Laken
Belgium · 6.2 km from Brussels50.888° N 4.360° E
William Helsen from Antwerp, Belgium · CC BY 2.0 The Royal Greenhouses of Laeken form a small city of glass in the grounds of the Belgian royal palace: domed pavilions, rotundas and long galleries that run between them like covered streets, together enclosing some two and a half hectares.
Did you know? Heating the glass complex has required around 800,000 litres of fuel oil a year.
16 Liège-Guillemins railway station
Station Luik-Guillemins
Belgium · 1.1 km from Liège50.625° N 5.567° E
Fred Romero from Paris, France · CC BY 2.0 Liège-Guillemins is a station without walls.
Did you know? Underfoot the station is paved in Belgian bluestone, the local grey limestone, contrasting with the white concrete and steel above.
17 St Bavo's Cathedral
Sint-Baafskathedraal
Belgium · 3.2 km from Ghent51.053° N 3.727° E
FrDr · CC BY-SA 4.0 Saint Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent keeps one of the founding works of European painting: the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the Ghent Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, completed in 1432.
Did you know? An unfinished earlier restoration had left the Lamb appearing to have four ears until the old overpainting was finally removed.
18 Hallerbos
Belgium · 14.4 km from Brussels50.708° N 4.295° E
Image by Ben_Kerckx from Pixabay For most of the year the Hallerbos is a pleasant, well-kept beech wood on the edge of the Brussels commuter belt.
Did you know? As late as the 18th century the Hallerbos was still joined to the Sonian Forest outside Brussels; the link was broken during French rule.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Belgium?
- On our list, Belfry of Bruges ranks first, followed by Menin Gate, Ypres and Leuven Town Hall.
- What does the Atomium represent?
- The Atomium represents a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified about 165 billion times, with nine stainless steel spheres connected by tubes. It was designed by André Waterkeyn for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
- What is the Menin Gate in Ypres?
- It is a memorial arch in Ypres dedicated to British and Commonwealth soldiers who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War and have no known grave. More than 54,000 names are carved on its walls.
- What is the Lion's Mound at Waterloo?
- It is an artificial hill raised in the 1820s on the battlefield of Waterloo, at the spot where the Prince of Orange was said to have been wounded in 1815. A cast-iron lion stands on top, and the summit overlooks the whole battlefield.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Belgium?
- In our collection, the places in Belgium are most often railway stations (2), caves (1), show caves (1) and botanical gardens (1).
- How many places are on this list in Belgium?
- The list covers 18 places.