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Few European capitals carry as many layers as Brussels. It is simultaneously the administrative centre of the European Union, a city of medieval guild halls and Art Nouveau townhouses, a place where French and Dutch cultures have negotiated a shared identity for centuries, and the undisputed world capital of chocolate and beer. That combination of the grand and the pleasurable, the bureaucratic and the baroque, gives the city a character that resists easy summary.

The Grand-Place is the obvious starting point for any first visit, and rightly so. The gilded facades of the seventeenth-century guild houses that ring the square are among the most theatrically beautiful civic architecture in northern Europe, and Victor Hugo, who lived in Brussels in exile, called it the most beautiful square in the world. From there, the Marolles neighbourhood descends southward through flea markets and working-class cafes, while the Ixelles district to the south-east offers a denser concentration of Art Nouveau buildings, including several by Victor Horta, whose Horta Museum occupies his former home and studio. The Sablon quarter, between the two, is where antique dealers and chocolatiers share the same cobbled streets.