Belgium Itinerary: 6 Days in Brussels, Ghent, Bruges
Six days across a country small enough to cross in two hours, and rich because of it: two days in Brussels, a capital that is also the administrative centre of Europe, then west to Ghent and Bruges, medieval cloth cities that got wealthy in the 1300s and have looked much the same ever since.
Belgium ranked #39 worldwide with 9.6 million international arrivals (2024, UN Tourism data compiled by worlddata.info, international arrivals; Statbel reports arrivals in commercial accommodation, which excludes day visitors and gives a different total). Last reviewed 2026-08-08.
Belgium · 6 days Brussels → Ghent → Bruges
Best time: April to June and September for mild weather and long light.
Brussels: Galeries Royales Saint-HubertDay 1
🏛️9:00 AMGaleries Royales Saint-Hubert
A glass-roofed shopping arcade from 1847, one of the first in Europe and the model for many that followed. Free to walk, and beautiful in rain.
🚶 ~13 min · 🚗 ~2 min · 0.5 mi
🖼️1:30 PMRoyal Museums of Fine Arts
Bruegel, Rubens, and the Flemish Primitives in one building. The Magritte Museum is a separate ticketed wing and holds the largest collection of his work anywhere.
🚶 ~11 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.4 mi
🌆6:00 PMGrand Place and the lower town
The guildhall square Victor Hugo called the most beautiful in Europe, rebuilt in stone after a French bombardment in 1695. The gold leaf on the facades is real and gets recoated.
Brussels: AtomiumDay 2
🏛️9:00 AMAtomium
A 102m model of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, built for the 1958 World's Fair and kept. Spheres are connected by escalators; the top one has the view.
🚗 ~24 min · 6.8 mi
🥾1:30 PMBois de la Cambre and Sonian Forest
The city's southern green edge running into an ancient beech forest that is UNESCO-listed. Trams reach the near end; the forest goes on for kilometres.
🚗 ~9 min · 2.5 mi
🎟️6:00 PMArt Nouveau walking tour
The facades are spread across residential Saint-Gilles and Ixelles and are easy to walk past without noticing. A guide is the difference between seeing three and seeing thirty.
Arrive in GhentDay 3
🚄8:30 AMTrain to Ghent
Brussels to Ghent-Sint-Pieters in about 30 minutes on frequent InterCity services from any of the three Brussels stations. No reservations on Belgian domestic trains; buy and board.
🚄 ~30m · 30 mi
🚶 Medieval centre on foot
🏛️2:00 PMGravensteen
A moated stone castle of 1180 in the middle of the city, complete with battlements and a genuinely grim torture collection. The audio guide is comic on purpose and works.
🚶 ~6 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.2 mi
🌆6:00 PMGraslei and Korenlei
The facing quays of medieval guild houses on the old harbour, and the place the whole city sits out on summer evenings with a drink on the stone steps.
Ghent: St Bavo's Cathedral and the Ghent AltarpieceDay 4
🏛️9:00 AMSt Bavo's Cathedral and the Ghent Altarpiece
Home of the Van Eycks' 1432 Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the most stolen artwork in history. The restored panels are a paid timed visit with an augmented-reality element; one panel stolen in 1934 has never been recovered.
🚶 ~25 min · 🚗 ~3 min · 0.9 mi
🖼️1:30 PMSTAM city museum
Ghent's own story told in an old abbey, opening with a walkable aerial photograph of the whole city on the floor. The right first stop.
🚶 ~27 min · 🚗 ~3 min · 1.0 mi
🎟️6:00 PMCanal boat tour
Forty minutes through the old harbour and the moat, which is the only way to see the guild fronts the way they were designed to be seen, from the water.
Arrive in BrugesDay 5
🚄8:30 AMTrain to Bruges
Ghent to Bruges in about 25 minutes, several times an hour. Short enough that basing in one and visiting the other works, though staying in both is better.
🚄 ~25m · 25 mi
🚶 Canals on foot
🏛️2:00 PMBelfry of Bruges
366 steps up a leaning 83m tower for the definitive view. A fixed number of people are allowed inside at once, so queues build by late morning. Go at opening.
🚶 Canals on foot
🌆6:00 PMMarkt
The main square under the belfry, ringed by stepped gable facades and horse-drawn cabs. Crowded until about five, then quiet enough to hear the carillon.
Bruges: Church of Our LadyDay 6
🏛️9:00 AMChurch of Our Lady
A brick spire of 115m, and inside, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, the only sculpture of his to leave Italy in his lifetime, bought by a Bruges cloth merchant.
🚶 ~2 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 446 ft
🖼️1:30 PMGroeningemuseum
Six centuries of Flemish painting in a small building, anchored by Van Eyck and Memling. Compact enough to do properly in ninety minutes.
🚶 ~5 min · 🚗 ~1 min · 0.2 mi
🎟️6:00 PMCanal boat tour
Thirty minutes on the canals from one of the jetties near the Burg. Runs March to November; the low bridges are the point.
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Best time to goApril to June and September for mild weather and long light. December for the Christmas markets, which are genuinely good here. Belgium is grey and wet often enough that the museums, cafés, and churches are the plan, not the fallback.
Recommended splitBrussels 2d · Ghent 2d · Bruges 2d
Local tip: Ghent and Bruges are 25 minutes apart by train, and the standard mistake is doing Bruges as a day trip and never seeing Ghent. Stay in both. Also: order beer by style rather than brand and let the café choose, and note that most bars serve each beer in its own specific glass, which is not a gimmick but a rule they take seriously.
Brussels, 2 days
A city that runs the European Union from one district and looks like a Flemish market town in another, with the best Art Nouveau architecture in the world scattered through its suburbs. It is bilingual, slightly chaotic, and considerably less polished than Bruges, which is what makes it interesting.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inGrand Place and the lower town. The guildhall square Victor Hugo called the most beautiful in Europe, rebuilt in stone after a French bombardment in 1695. The gold leaf on the facades is real and gets recoated.Sablon. The antiques and chocolate quarter on the hill, with a Gothic church at the top and a weekend antiques market in the square below.Saint-Gilles and Ixelles. Where the Art Nouveau is: Horta's townhouses and dozens of lesser-known facades on ordinary residential streets. Walk it with a map and look up.
LandmarksGaleries Royales Saint-Hubert. A glass-roofed shopping arcade from 1847, one of the first in Europe and the model for many that followed. Free to walk, and beautiful in rain.Atomium. A 102m model of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, built for the 1958 World's Fair and kept. Spheres are connected by escalators; the top one has the view.Manneken Pis. A 61cm bronze boy urinating, dressed in costume several hundred days a year from a wardrobe kept at the city museum. Absurdly small, and the city's entire sense of humour in one object.Parc du Cinquantenaire. A triumphal arch and colonnade built for Belgium's fiftieth anniversary, with museums in the wings and the EU quarter beginning at its edge.
Nature and outdoorsBois de la Cambre and Sonian Forest. The city's southern green edge running into an ancient beech forest that is UNESCO-listed. Trams reach the near end; the forest goes on for kilometres.
MuseumsRoyal Museums of Fine Arts. Bruegel, Rubens, and the Flemish Primitives in one building. The Magritte Museum is a separate ticketed wing and holds the largest collection of his work anywhere.Belgian Comic Strip Center. Tintin, the Smurfs, and the whole bande dessinée tradition, in a Horta-designed Art Nouveau warehouse. The building alone justifies the ticket.Horta Museum. Victor Horta's own house and studio in Saint-Gilles, kept as he built it. The stairwell is the single best room in Art Nouveau. No photography, small capacity, so go early.
Worth a guided tourArt Nouveau walking tour. The facades are spread across residential Saint-Gilles and Ixelles and are easy to walk past without noticing. A guide is the difference between seeing three and seeing thirty.Belgian beer tasting. A guided round through the old cafés of the lower town, tasting the styles that matter here: lambic, gueuze, trappist, saison. Belgian brewing culture is on the UNESCO intangible heritage list, and gueuze in particular is unlike anything else.
Getting around BrusselsMetro, trams, and buses on one ticket. The lower town is walkable but hilly between the upper and lower halves. There are free public lifts and escalators if you look for them.
Ghent, 2 days
Getting here: Train, Brussels to Ghent-Sint-Pieters in about 30 minutes on frequent InterCity services from any of the three Brussels stations. No reservations on Belgian domestic trains; buy and board.
In the 1300s this was one of the largest cities in Europe, second only to Paris north of the Alps, and it has the guildhall waterfront to prove it. It is also a university city of 70,000 students, so unlike Bruges it never became a museum of itself. The medieval centre is full of people who live there.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inGraslei and Korenlei. The facing quays of medieval guild houses on the old harbour, and the place the whole city sits out on summer evenings with a drink on the stone steps.Patershol. A knot of tiny medieval lanes behind the castle, once the tanners' quarter, now the restaurant district. Almost car-free by geometry rather than by rule.
LandmarksGravensteen. A moated stone castle of 1180 in the middle of the city, complete with battlements and a genuinely grim torture collection. The audio guide is comic on purpose and works.St Bavo's Cathedral and the Ghent Altarpiece. Home of the Van Eycks' 1432 Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the most stolen artwork in history. The restored panels are a paid timed visit with an augmented-reality element; one panel stolen in 1934 has never been recovered.Belfry of Ghent. A 91m UNESCO-listed tower with a lift to the top and the city's dragon weathervane above it. Views over all three towers in a line.
Nature and outdoorsCitadelpark. The nineteenth-century park south of the centre holding both major art museums, with lawns the students colonise the moment the sun appears.
MuseumsSTAM city museum. Ghent's own story told in an old abbey, opening with a walkable aerial photograph of the whole city on the floor. The right first stop.Museum of Fine Arts (MSK). Bosch, Rubens, and a strong Flemish Expressionist holding, opposite the contemporary S.M.A.K. across the park.
Worth a guided tourCanal boat tour. Forty minutes through the old harbour and the moat, which is the only way to see the guild fronts the way they were designed to be seen, from the water.
Getting around GhentThe centre is walkable and largely car-free. Trams run from the station to the middle, which is the one journey worth riding; everything else is on foot.
Bruges, 2 days
Getting here: Train, Ghent to Bruges in about 25 minutes, several times an hour. Short enough that basing in one and visiting the other works, though staying in both is better.
A medieval trading city that got rich on cloth, then lost its sea access when the harbour silted up in the 1500s, and so was too poor to modernise for three centuries. That accident preserved it whole. It is touristy in daylight and completely transformed once the day-trip coaches leave.
Neighborhoods to base yourself inMarkt. The main square under the belfry, ringed by stepped gable facades and horse-drawn cabs. Crowded until about five, then quiet enough to hear the carillon.Burg Square. The older civic square next door, with the Gothic town hall and the Basilica of the Holy Blood, which claims a relic brought back from the Second Crusade.
LandmarksBelfry of Bruges. 366 steps up a leaning 83m tower for the definitive view. A fixed number of people are allowed inside at once, so queues build by late morning. Go at opening.Church of Our Lady. A brick spire of 115m, and inside, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, the only sculpture of his to leave Italy in his lifetime, bought by a Bruges cloth merchant.Rozenhoedkaai. The canal bend that is on every photograph of Belgium ever taken. Go at dawn and you will have it to yourself, which is the whole trick.
Nature and outdoorsBegijnhof and Minnewater. A UNESCO-listed walled courtyard of white houses founded in 1245 for lay religious women, with daffodils in spring, opening onto the Lake of Love and its swans.
MuseumsGroeningemuseum. Six centuries of Flemish painting in a small building, anchored by Van Eyck and Memling. Compact enough to do properly in ninety minutes.Sint-Janshospitaal. A medieval hospital still holding its wards and its Memling panels, painted for this building and never moved. One of the oldest surviving hospital buildings in Europe.
Worth a guided tourCanal boat tour. Thirty minutes on the canals from one of the jetties near the Burg. Runs March to November; the low bridges are the point.Evening walk after the coaches leave. Not a paid tour so much as a plan: the lit squares and canals after seven, when the day-trippers have gone and Bruges becomes the town people actually live in.
Getting around BrugesEntirely on foot; the historic centre is about two kilometres across and ringed by a canal. Bikes are pleasant on the outer ring path. Cars are pointless and parking is deliberately painful.
The full plan as text
The same day-by-day plan, expandable day by day. Times are starting points, not homework.
Day 1: Brussels: Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert
9:00 AMGaleries Royales Saint-Hubert
A glass-roofed shopping arcade from 1847, one of the first in Europe and the model for many that followed. Free to walk, and beautiful in rain.
1:30 PMRoyal Museums of Fine Arts
Bruegel, Rubens, and the Flemish Primitives in one building. The Magritte Museum is a separate ticketed wing and holds the largest collection of his work anywhere.
6:00 PMGrand Place and the lower town
The guildhall square Victor Hugo called the most beautiful in Europe, rebuilt in stone after a French bombardment in 1695. The gold leaf on the facades is real and gets recoated.
Day 2: Brussels: Atomium
9:00 AMAtomium
A 102m model of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, built for the 1958 World's Fair and kept. Spheres are connected by escalators; the top one has the view.
1:30 PMBois de la Cambre and Sonian Forest
The city's southern green edge running into an ancient beech forest that is UNESCO-listed. Trams reach the near end; the forest goes on for kilometres.
6:00 PMArt Nouveau walking tour
The facades are spread across residential Saint-Gilles and Ixelles and are easy to walk past without noticing. A guide is the difference between seeing three and seeing thirty.
Day 3: Arrive in Ghent
8:30 AMTrain to Ghent
Brussels to Ghent-Sint-Pieters in about 30 minutes on frequent InterCity services from any of the three Brussels stations. No reservations on Belgian domestic trains; buy and board.
2:00 PMGravensteen
A moated stone castle of 1180 in the middle of the city, complete with battlements and a genuinely grim torture collection. The audio guide is comic on purpose and works.
6:00 PMGraslei and Korenlei
The facing quays of medieval guild houses on the old harbour, and the place the whole city sits out on summer evenings with a drink on the stone steps.
Day 4: Ghent: St Bavo's Cathedral and the Ghent Altarpiece
9:00 AMSt Bavo's Cathedral and the Ghent Altarpiece
Home of the Van Eycks' 1432 Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, the most stolen artwork in history. The restored panels are a paid timed visit with an augmented-reality element; one panel stolen in 1934 has never been recovered.
1:30 PMSTAM city museum
Ghent's own story told in an old abbey, opening with a walkable aerial photograph of the whole city on the floor. The right first stop.
6:00 PMCanal boat tour
Forty minutes through the old harbour and the moat, which is the only way to see the guild fronts the way they were designed to be seen, from the water.
Day 5: Arrive in Bruges
8:30 AMTrain to Bruges
Ghent to Bruges in about 25 minutes, several times an hour. Short enough that basing in one and visiting the other works, though staying in both is better.
2:00 PMBelfry of Bruges
366 steps up a leaning 83m tower for the definitive view. A fixed number of people are allowed inside at once, so queues build by late morning. Go at opening.
6:00 PMMarkt
The main square under the belfry, ringed by stepped gable facades and horse-drawn cabs. Crowded until about five, then quiet enough to hear the carillon.
Day 6: Bruges: Church of Our Lady
9:00 AMChurch of Our Lady
A brick spire of 115m, and inside, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, the only sculpture of his to leave Italy in his lifetime, bought by a Bruges cloth merchant.
1:30 PMGroeningemuseum
Six centuries of Flemish painting in a small building, anchored by Van Eyck and Memling. Compact enough to do properly in ninety minutes.
6:00 PMCanal boat tour
Thirty minutes on the canals from one of the jetties near the Burg. Runs March to November; the low bridges are the point.
Make this Belgium trip yours
Forward your real booking confirmations to Petrel and it builds this exact day-by-day view for you: flights, hotels, reservations, live flight status, and the travel time between stops. Under a minute.
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