The Most Beautiful Places in Brussels
5 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Brussels are Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, Atomium and Grand-Place. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Brussels is a city-region rather than a landscape, and its beauty is architectural. A medieval trading town on the Senne grew into a ducal residence, then into the capital of Belgium after 1830, and the wealth of the young industrial kingdom paid for arcades, palaces and greenhouses. Around 1900 the city became the birthplace of Art Nouveau architecture, and after the Second World War it hosted a world's fair and became a seat of European institutions.
The Grand-Place is the historic heart, a square enclosed by the Gothic town hall and the richly decorated guildhouses rebuilt after the French bombardment of 1695; it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Close by, the Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries, opened in 1847, are among the oldest covered shopping arcades in Europe, with a long glass roof over shops and cafés.
Art Nouveau is best seen at the Horta Museum, the house and studio Victor Horta built for himself around 1900, with flowing ironwork, mosaics and light pouring through a central stairwell. In Laeken, the Royal Greenhouses built for King Leopold II form a chain of glass domes and galleries filled with exotic plants. On the Heysel plateau, the Atomium, built for Expo 58, represents an iron crystal enlarged around 165 billion times, its steel spheres linked by tubes.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries | Covered passageway | |
| 2 | Atomium | Monument | |
| 3 | Grand-Place | Square | ✓ |
| 4 | Horta Museum | Museum | |
| 5 | Royal Greenhouses of Laeken | Botanical garden |
01 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.
02 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.
03 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.
04 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.
05 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.
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 Brussels?
- On our list, Royal Saint-Hubert Galleries ranks first, followed by Atomium and Grand-Place.
- What does the Atomium represent?
- It represents the unit cell of an iron crystal, magnified about 165 billion times. It was built as the centrepiece of the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
- Why are the guildhouses on the Grand-Place so similar in age?
- Most of the square was destroyed by French bombardment in 1695. The guilds rebuilt their houses within a few years, giving the square its unified Baroque appearance around the older Gothic town hall.
- Who was Victor Horta?
- A Belgian architect and one of the founders of Art Nouveau. Several of his Brussels town houses, including his own home, now the Horta Museum, are listed by UNESCO.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Brussels?
- In our collection, the places in Brussels are most often botanical gardens (1), squares (1), shopping arcades and passages (1) and monuments (1).
- How many places are on this list in Brussels?
- The list covers 5 places.