Famous Landmarks in Belgium: 10 Sites Worth Seeing
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. See the full itinerary.
From the same hand-researched library as our Belgium itinerary. Last reviewed 2026-08-08.
Brussels
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.
1
Galeries 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.
Brussels
2
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.
Brussels
3
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.
Brussels
4
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.
Brussels
Ghent
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.
5
Gravensteen
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.
Ghent
6
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.
Ghent
7
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.
Ghent
Bruges
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.
8
Belfry 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.
Bruges
9
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.
Bruges
10
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.
Bruges
Museums, parks, and neighborhoods are on the full Belgium itinerary, sequenced into a realistic day-by-day plan with transport between cities.
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