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Musée des Sciences Naturelles
Thought-provoking and highly interactive, this museum has far more than the usual selection of stuffed animals. But the undoubted highlight is a unique ‘family’ of iguanodons – 10m-high dinosaurs found in a Hainaut coal mine in 1878. A computer simulation shows the mudslide that mi
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Château Beaufort
Across a pretty, part-wooded valley behind the village of Beaufort is a ruinous but very imposing five-storey medieval castle. Once the site of a Roman camp, the sandstone fortress expanded from 12th-century origins but never recovered from WWII bombing during the Battle of the Ard
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Musée du Costume et de la Dentelle
Lace making has been one of Flanders’ finest crafts since the 16th century. While kloskant (bobbin lace) originated in Bruges, naaldkant (needlepoint lace) was developed in Italy but was predominantly made in Brussels. This excellent museum reveals lace’s applications for under- an
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Grotte de Lorette
This cave system has fewer stalactites than nearby Han, and handling the 626 relatively steep steps is more physical. However, the small-group visits give a vastly more personal experience. Half-lit stairways give a magical hint of the main cave’s great vertical depth (65m) and the
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MSK
Styled like a Greek temple, this superb 1903 fine-art gallery introduces a veritable A-Z of great Belgian and Low Countries’ painters from the 14th to mid-20th centuries. Highlights include a happy family of coffins by Magritte, Luminist canvases by Emile Claus, and Pieter Breughel
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Grand Place
Brussels’ magnificent Grand Place is one of the world’s most unforgettable urban ensembles. Oddly hidden, the enclosed cobblestone square is only revealed as you enter on foot from one of six narrow side alleys: Rue des Harengs is the best first approach. The focal point is the spi
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Église Notre
The Sablon’s large, flamboyantly Gothic church started life as the 1304 archers’ guild chapel. A century later it had to be massively enlarged to cope with droves of pilgrims attracted by the supposed healing powers of its Madonna statue. The statue was procured in 1348 by means of
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Parc d’Enghien
Originally set out in the 17th century by the dukes of Arenberg, the Parc d’Enghien incorporates vast stands of woodland, fountains, statues, a tiny ‘Chinese’ pavilion, a topiary garden, a pond-side terrace café and the mansion-castle Château Empain (closed to the public). Views he
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Atlantikwall
The gripping Atlantikwall is a remarkably extensive complex of WWI and WWII bunkers, gun emplacements and linking brick tunnels created by occupying German forces. Most bunkers are furnished and ‘manned’ by waxwork figures, and there’s a detailed audio-guide explanation (albeit som
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Old England Building
This 1899 former department store is an art-nouveau showpiece with a black facade aswirl with wrought iron and arched windows. The building contains the groundbreaking music museum , a celebration of music in all its forms, as well as a repository for more than 2000 historic instru
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Abbaye d’Aulne
With origins in the 7th century, but destroyed post-French Revolution in 1794, this atmospheric monastery is a mixture of picturesque ruins, surviving 18th-century buildings and a later 19th-century convent church. The Cistercians ran the place in its heyday, when a sophisticated w
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Hôpital Notre
Founded in 1242, this is Belgium’s only medieval convent-farm-hospital complex to have survived reasonably intact. Laboriously restored, it demonstrates the development of medieval medicine from a beautiful herb garden via different eras of hospice to a collection of historical med
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Musée du Cinquantenaire
This astonishingly rich collection ranges from ancient Egyptian sarcophagi to Meso-American masks to icons to wooden bicycles. Decide what you want to see before coming or the sheer scope can prove overwhelming. Visually attractive spaces include the medieval stone carvings set aro
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Brasserie à Vapeur
Started in 1785, this tiny affair is Belgium’s last traditional steam-operated brewery. This wonderfully authentic family enterprise is best known for its Vapeur Cochonne, whose bare-breasted cartoon-pig labels were censored for the US market. Sunday brewery tours include beer tast
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Memorial 1815
Inaugurated for the 2015 bicentenary, this showpiece underground museum and visitor centre at the battlefield gives some detail on the background to Napoleons rise, fills in information on key incidents, then describes the make-up of each sides forces. Theres a detailed audioguide
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Musée de la Photographie
One of Europe’s biggest and most impressive photography museums, with an engrossing collection of historic, contemporary and artistic prints. Don’t miss the area upstairs dealing with airbrushing, tricks of the trade and optical illusions. Particularly intriguing is a little curtai
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Grand Curtius
The splendid Grand Curtius uses the thoroughly renovated mansion of a 17th-century Liège entrepreneur to unite four discrete museum collections. It then makes a very ambitious stab at explaining the whole history of art from prehistoric stone chippings to art-nouveau pianos, while
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Musée des Beaux
From outside, this museum is a 1980s concrete travesty. Within, however, clever design creates a spiral of gallery spaces ideal for viewing the excellent collection of paintings by French-speaking Belgians. The scope ranges from fine medieval canvases by Lambert Lombard and Pierre
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Strépy
The world’s tallest ship lift (2002), raising or lowering gigantic ‘baths’ 73 vertical metres, is on a pharaonic scale, as was the €150 million it cost. Though you can watch the lift from outdoors, visits allow you to look down on the engine room, appreciate the construction via a
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Antwerp Port
Beautiful it ain’t. But its sheer jaw-dropping scale makes driving through this historic port an unforgettable experience. Its the world’s fourth-largest port complex (Europe’s second after Rotterdam) and a surreal industrial-age maze of cranes, loading yards, container stacks, doc
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