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Musée Bruxellois de la Gueuze
Anyone with even a vague interest in Belgian beers must not miss a visit to the excellent Musée Bruxellois de la Gueuze. It's not so much a museum as a self-guided tour through the family-run Cantillon brewery, where the owners still proudly use traditional methods to make their strange lambic beers. After a brief introduction, make your own way around the ancient complex before returning to sample a beer or two.
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Musée Constantin Meunier
The southern part of Ixelles is home to the intimate Musée Constantin Meunier. Constantin Meunier (1831-1905), a Brussels-born artist, is best known for his emotive sculptures fed by social realism. Larger-than-life bronzes depict working-class themes - muscular miners from Hainaut, dockworkers from Antwerp and men reaping fields. The museum occupies the town house where he lived and worked during his last years.
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Musée d'Art Ancien
To view the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts chronologically, start with the Musée d'Art Ancien. Begin with the Flemish Primitives, including works by Rogier Van der Weyden, Dirk Bouts, Hans Memling and Gerard David. Move onto Quinten Matsijs, whose paintings demonstrate a turning point in Flemish art as traditional realistic scenes were superseded by the more flamboyant Renaissance style imported from Italy.
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Musée d'Art Moderne
The Musée d'Art Moderne houses 19th- and 20th-century art and occupies a subterranean gallery that meanders for six levels below ground. Due to the opening of the new Magritte Museum here, some of the collection has been moved to the Dexia Art Centre in Rue de l'Écuyer. Whether here or there, earlier highlights to look out for include sculptures by Constantin Meunier, Ensor's macabre fighting skeletons, and many paintings by Paul Delvaux.
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Musée David et Alice Van Buuren
The exquisite Musée David Et Alice van Buuren is located in the former house of Dutch banker David van Buuren, a wealthy collector and patron of the arts who built this Art Deco showpiece in 1928.
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Musée De La Brasserie
Brussels' brewery museum is authentic in the sense that it occupies the basement of the brewers' guildhall and has some 18th-century brewing equipment. But visitors are often disappointed at its small size and the lack of any actual brewing taking place (though you do get a beer at the end). To see a real brewery in action, head to the Cantillon Brewery's Musée Bruxellois de la Gueuze.
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Musée De La Ville De Bruxelles
No king ever lived in this Maison du Roi (King's House), but in the folklore section of Brussels' City Museum are 760-odd regal costumes - including an Elvis suit - belonging to Manneken Pis, whose official dresser cloaks him in these little outfits on special occasions. Other museum highlights include Pieter Breugel the Elder's Cortège de Noces (Wedding Procession; 1567), along with maps and paintings tracing the history of the city.
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Musée des Enfants
Musée des Enfants is basically a big old mansion that's morphed into an indoor playground. Kids (aged three to nine) can paint, plant a garden, explore a space capsule, bake biscuits and more. It's very popular, particularly on wet days.
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Musée Des Instruments De Musique & Old England Building
Strap on a pair of headphones then step on the automated floor panels in front of the precious instruments (including world instruments and Adolphe Sax's inventions) to hear them being played. As much of a highlight as the Musical Instrument Museum itself is its premises - the Art Nouveau Old England building. This former department store was built in 1899 by Paul Saintenoy and has a panoramic rooftop café and outdoor terrace.
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Musée du Costume et de la Dentelle
Lace-making has been one of Flanders' finest (and most eye-straining) crafts since the 16th century. While kloskant (bobbin lace) is believed to have originated in Bruges, naaldkant (needlepoint lace) developed in Italy but was predominantly made in Brussels. The Costume and Lace Museum reveals lace's applications for under- and outerwear over the centuries, as well as displaying other luxury textiles such as embroidery. Ask for an English-language booklet.
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Musée du Jouet
This newly renovated museum explores the toys of yesteryear. It's full of stuff, but it's not 'Hands off!'
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Musée Horta
A superb introduction to the late-19th-century Art Nouveau movement is the Musée Horta. It occupies two adjoining houses in St Gilles that Horta designed and built between 1898 and 1901 and is where he lived until 1919.
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Musée Magritte
A completely anonymous, suburban yellow-brick house: that's the façade of the Musée Magritte, and the façade that René Magritte, Belgium's most famous surrealist artist, showed the outside world. This museum in Jette occupies the house where Magritte and his wife Georgette lived from 1930 to 1954. Its appeal comes from its incredibly ordinary nature. It's odd to think the man responsible for some of the 20th century's most enduring images spent 24 years of his life in this bourgeois backstreet.
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Musée Royale de l'Armée et d'Histoire Militaire
One for military buffs, this museum houses an extensive array of weaponry, uniforms, vehicles, warships and documentation dating from the Middle Ages through to Belgian independence and the mid-20th century. There's a panoramic view of the park's triumphal arch (built in 1880), the Arcade du Cinquantenaire, from the top floor.
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Musées Royaux d'Art et d'Histoire
Antiquities and artefacts from non-European civilisations are the highlights of the Royal Museum of Art and History (including sections set up for the visually impaired), contrasted by comprehensive coverage of European decorative arts.
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Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
This museum houses Belgium's premier collections of ancient and modern art and is particularly well endowed with works by Pieter Breugel the Elder, Rubens and the Belgian surrealists. Both sections are large and you'll need a good day here if you want to do them justice.
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Museum of Cocoa and Chocolate
Exhibits at Brussels' museum of cocoa and chocolate give you a quick rundown of chocolate's history in Europe, along with chocolate's anti-aging and antidepressant properties. A couple of small treats along the way include a tasting at the praline-making demonstration. Better yet are the museum's occasional one-hour praline-making courses - call for details.
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Museum of Natural Sciences
Colossal skeletons of iguanodon dinosaurs that roamed the land some 135 million years ago, found in a Belgian coal mine in 1878, are displayed in their 10m-high fossilised glory in this newly renovated and highly absorbing Museum of Natural Sciences.
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Palais de Justice
Larger than St Peter's in Rome, the colossal law court, the Palais de Justice, was one of Léopold II's most stupendous projects. It was purposely sited on a hill above the working-class Marolles as a symbol of law and order. Its design, intended to evoke the temples of the Egyptian Pharaohs, is equally intimidating.
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Parc de Bruxelles
Brussels is well endowed with outlying forests and parklands, but in the inner city it's a different story. The largest central patch of greenery is the Parc de Bruxelles, an old, formal park flanked by the Palais Royal and the Palais de la Nation. Laid out under the dukes of Brabant, it's dotted with classical statues and framed by trees with mercilessly trellised branches. Lunchtime office workers, joggers and families with kids love it in summer.
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Parc de Laeken
The Parc de Laeken starts opposite the Domaine Royal and stretches to the Atomium. Dotted with chestnut and magnolia trees, its focal point is Léopold I's statue, erected in 1880.
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Parc des Expositions
The Parc des Expositions is a trade fair complex built in the 1930s to commemorate a century of independence. The major building here is Palais du Centenaire, an Art Deco piece featuring terraced tiers capped by statues.
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Parc du Cinquantenaire
Parc du Cinquantenaire was built during Léopold II's reign. It's best known for its cluster of museums - art, history, military and motor vehicles - and the massive Arcade du Cinquantenaire, a triumphal arch built in 1880 to celebrate 50 years of Belgian independence. In summer, this area is put to good use with a popular drive-in cinema .
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Parc Tenbosch
Ixelles' small Parc Tenbosch has a fenced, sandy, dog-free play area for toddlers.
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Pavillon Chinois
The Pavillon Chinois is a Léopold II leftover, built after he saw similar at the 1890 Paris World Fair. It is a gloriously glittering affair and houses an extensive collection of Chinese porcelain.
