Neighborhoods in Brief

Brussels is flat in its center and western reaches, where the now-vanished Senne River once flowed. To the east, a range of low hills rises to the upper city, which is crowned by the Royal Palace and has some of the city's most affluent residential and prestigious business and shopping districts. The Grand-Place stands at the heart of Brussels and is both a starting point and reference point for most visitors.

The center city's small, cobbled streets are clustered around the magnificent Grand-Place. Two of the most traveled lanes nearby are restaurant-lined rue des Bouchers and Petite rue des Bouchers, part of an area known as the Ilot Sacré. A block from the Grand-Place is the classical colonnaded Bourse (Stock Exchange). A few blocks north, on place de la Monnaie, is the Monnaie opera house and ballet theater, named after the coin mint that once stood here. Brussels's busiest shopping street, pedestrianized rue Neuve, starts from place de la Monnaie and runs north for several blocks.

The Upper Town is spread along an escarpment southeast of the center city, where you find the second great square, place du Grand Sablon, the Royal Fine Arts Museums, and the Royal Palace. If you head southwest and cross the broad boulevard de Waterloo, where you find the most exclusive designer stores, you come to place Louise. From here, Brussels's most fashionable thoroughfare, avenue Louise, runs south all the way to a large wooded park called the Bois de la Cambre. Both main streets are flanked by attractive residential side streets. Between the Palais de Justice and Gare du Midi, the unpretentious working-class Marolles area has cozy cafes, drinking man's bars, and inexpensive restaurants; its denizens even speak their own dialect.

Beyond the center, things start to get hazier. On either side of avenue Louise, a chic boulevard south of the center city, are the classy districts of Ixelles and Uccle. They're both good areas for restaurants and shopping, and both border the wide green spaces of the Bois de la Cambre and the Forêt de Soignes.

East of the center city lies a part of Brussels whose denizens are regarded by many Bruxellois with the same suspicion they might apply to just-landed extraterrestrials. I refer, of course, to the European Union district around place Schuman, where the European Commission, Parliament, and Council of Ministers buildings jostle for space in a warren of offices populated by civil servants, journalists, and lobbyists. (The area is home to a wealth of restaurants and cafes that cater to Euro appetites.) A quaint old neighborhood was made to disappear to make way for these noble edifices.

In the north of the city (and something of a leap of the imagination) is the Bruparck. Inside this recreation complex is the Mini-Europe theme park; the 26-screen Kinepolis multiplex movie theater; a made-to-order village with stores, cafes, and restaurants; and the Océade water park. Beside it are the Atomium, Brussels Planetarium, Roi Baudouin soccer stadium, and Parc des Expositions convention center.