Belgium is the size of Maryland and contains within it two countries that do not particularly like each other.
To the north, Flanders: Dutch-speaking, economically dominant, architecturally Flemish — which is to say Gothic spires and market squares and the particular civic pride of cities that were, in the 15th century, among the wealthiest in Europe. To the south, Wallonia: French-speaking, historically industrial, the older wealth gone now and with it a certain confidence.
Between them, Brussels: officially bilingual, belonging to neither region, the capital of Belgium and of the European Union, a city that has spent its entire existence negotiating between two cultures that speak different languages and perceive different histories.
The country functions — has functioned for nearly two hundred years — as a kind of enforced cohabitation. It works, and the tension never fully disappears. Belgium is not a country of grand monuments so much as a country of beauty accumulated in smaller registers: the guild hall facade, the canal at dusk, the village church at the base of a cliff. The contradictions are real, and so is what has been built in spite of them.
We came through twice — in 2018 as part of a longer Northwestern European journey by rail, and again in 2023, a single night in Brussels on our way from Luxembourg to Amsterdam. Both times Belgium offered something the other destinations on our itinerary did not: a visible and unresolved negotiation — two cultures working out how to coexist equitably and cohesively while holding onto what makes each of them distinct.
The first time, we entered from the Netherlands and stopped in Antwerp before continuing south. Antwerp is a Flemish city with the easy confidence of old money — diamond wealth, port wealth, the wealth of having been the commercial center of northern Europe at the moment northern Europe was reorganizing the world’s trade.
The train station announces this immediately: a Beaux-Arts cathedral of iron and stone, its main hall rising through multiple galleries under a vaulted glass roof, decorative ironwork at every level. It is, by some measures, the most beautiful train station in Europe, and the Antwerpeners know it. The city beyond it is composed and handsome in the way of cities that don’t need to prove anything.
Brussels is different. Brussels is at once opulent and gritty, grandiose and grounded, French and Dutch. The Grand-Place — the central market square surrounded by baroque guild halls with gilded facades — is one of the great civic spaces in Europe, the kind of square that makes you understand what the medieval city was building toward.
Then you walk two streets and you’re in the ordinary city: the covered passages of the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, mid-19th century and lovely, the waffle stands and the friteries and the particular Brussels habit of placing Art Nouveau architecture between buildings of no particular distinction, as if the city tried for beauty in intervals rather than systems.
Victor Horta’s townhouses still stand in the residential neighborhoods south of the center, their iron tendrils growing up facades in a style that only Brussels produced and that Brussels promptly tore down half of before deciding to protect the rest.
We came to appreciate Brussels for its contradictions — for the way it works hard to meet in the middle of itself, and for how visibly that effort shows. A city with no contradictions is either very small or not paying attention. Brussels has too much history packed into too little space for resolution to be an option.
On a day trip west from Brussels we took the train to Bruges, where the medieval city survives almost intact — the canal network, the belfry, the cloth hall, the whole ensemble preserved with a quaintness that is entirely genuine.
We strolled from the grand belfry in the Grote Markt across the Burg square past the Gothic Stadhuis and through a covered passage to the Groenerei canal, where the sound of horse and carriage on cobblestone followed us at intervals, evoking something unhurried and genuinely old.
Near a street fair at the old Vismarkt — jewelry, paintings, pottery arranged along the canal — I stopped to watch a woman turn clay on a wheel with skilled precision, her hands barely moving, the form rising.
Nearby, two young musicians played traditional Dutch folk instruments together: he on accordion, she on a hammered dulcimer, the Renaissance-era sound carrying across the water with the ease of something that belonged there. Tourists filled small wooden boats that puttered down the canal.
We found our own quiet wandering the perimeter of Sint-Janshospitaal — one of the oldest surviving hospital buildings in Europe — where we came upon a small architecture exhibit on display as we walked its exterior gardens.
On the way back we stopped in Ghent: larger than Bruges, more city in its energy, the streets buzzing with street fairs along the Leie. From the St. Michael’s Bridge the tents of the Predikherenlei spread out below against the backdrop of the belfry and Sint-Niklaaskerk — the kind of view that reminds you what a medieval city was organizing itself toward.
Dinant was quiet on a different register entirely — almost too much so, a ferris wheel turning empty near the tree line of the hill behind the town. The scale changes east of Brussels: the flat Flemish landscape gives way to the Meuse valley, narrow and steep, limestone bluffs rising on both sides with a gravity to the whole scene.
The town is small and perhaps humble by the measures of Bruges or Brussels, but it is well-built and genuinely beautiful — the kind of place that doesn’t announce itself and doesn’t need to. The Collégiale Notre-Dame sits at the base of a sheer cliff face, its bulbous onion dome the architectural signature of the Walloon Baroque, and directly above it, a citadel that has watched every army that ever moved through this valley.
Dinant is the birthplace of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, and takes this seriously — saxophones painted in every color line the bridge over the Meuse, and a large brass monument stands as if auditioning for a more prominent street. We stopped at Café Leffe for a brune — dark, smooth, brewed at the nearby Abbaye de Leffe — and had lunch overlooking the river. Cash only; this far into Wallonia, the card reader is not guaranteed.
That afternoon back in Brussels we explored the Royal Quarter before dinner at ‘T Kelderke, a vaulted cellar restaurant on the Grand-Place where I had carbonnade à la flamande with another dark Flemish beer.
After dinner we went looking for Manneken-Pis — the famous small bronze of a boy relieving himself into a fountain, which Brussels has somehow elevated into a civic symbol. The statue is smaller than expected and considerably less interesting than the crowd of tourists surrounding it with selfie sticks. We left them to it and walked back through the streets past la Bourse toward our apartment near Sainte-Catherine, where we discovered a small chocolate shop that required a longer stop than planned.
In 2023 we arrived by train in the early afternoon from Luxembourg, the rail line having carried us back through the Walloon landscape — rolling, green, the kind of countryside that makes you understand why people stayed.
Our hotel was a short walk from Brussels-Central, near the Grand-Place, and we spent the warm afternoon with waffles and then frites with mayo as we made our way through the decorated and slightly labyrinthine streets. Inside Les Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert — the mid-19th century covered shopping arcade whose vaulted glass ceiling produces a particular quality of diffused afternoon light — we slowed down in the way that good architecture asks you to.
Near the Agoraplein, a street performer’s voice stopped me: a young woman with aqua blue hair singing current pop songs with a quality that matched their originals, her sign inviting followers to find her as Mina Blue. Brussels felt more alive than I remembered it — cleaner too; the soot that had darkened Sainte-Catherine on our first visit had been removed, and the church showed what it actually was.
We were also happy to find the chocolate shop still near the plaza fountain.
That evening, while the boys did their own thing, Aaron and I settled at an outdoor table at Au Brasseur for a flight of Belgian ales before walking to Fin de Siècle for dinner. The menu was written on a chalkboard — the day’s selections, nothing more. Stoemp saucisses: herbed mashed potatoes beneath a juicy sausage, surrounded by a robust gravy that was neither heavy nor greasy. The kind of memorable meal that a city makes when it has nothing to prove.
After dinner, dusk was just settling as we walked back past la Bourse — its facade reflecting in the pool below — and into the Grand-Place. It was nearly ten o’clock and the square was still alive, the summer light finally softening into evening, the warmly lit guild facades drawing people in rather than sending them home.
We stayed long enough to understand why it’s called what it’s called — grand not just for its size but for what it produces in the people inside it. The kind of outdoor space that makes you understand what a city is for when it gets it right.
The next morning we continued north by rail — a quick stop in Antwerp to walk the concourse of Centraal station once more and along De Keyserlei — before arriving in Amsterdam. The two countries inside Belgium were still working out their terms. But Brussels, held between them, was holding its ground.
Cultural notes: Frites — twice-fried and served with mayonnaise or aioli, not ketchup — were invented in Belgium; “French fries” refers to the French cut of the potato, not the country of origin. Each Belgian beer has its own specific glass, designed for the style — it is not an affectation but a genuine matter of how the beer behaves. The versions exported to the United States are a different product. Cash is still required in many rural cafés and restaurants, particularly in Wallonia.
Belgium connects to the Benelux Atlas and the Brussels Lens essay. Read about The Netherlands, where this journey began →