Brussels Historic Centre Guided Walking Tour with Chocolate Tasting

Grand-Place, the heart of Brussels

The walk begins in front of the City Hall on the Grand-Place, the square that has been the market, political centre and stage of Brussels since the Middle Ages. The City Hall is the only Gothic building to survive the French bombardment of 1695, its asymmetrical facade crowned by a 96-metre tower topped with a statue of the Archangel Michael; the rest of the square, the King's House and the guild houses with their gilded gables, was rebuilt within five years in a unified Baroque style that still looks remarkably new. Your guide decodes the symbols on each facade, from the bakers to the tailors and the boatmen.

The best time to visit the Grand-Place is the 10:30 departure, before the square fills, though the 15:30 walk catches the facades in warm afternoon light. Nearby on Rue Charles Buls, the bronze relief of Everard t'Serclaes, the fourteenth-century hero of the city, is rubbed for luck by passers-by, and the guide explains why.

Manneken Pis and the lanes of the Lower City

From the square the route follows Rue de l'Étuve to Manneken Pis, the small bronze fountain of a urinating boy that has stood at this corner since the early seventeenth century and became a symbol of the city's irreverent humour. The statue has a wardrobe of hundreds of costumes and is dressed for festivals and national days; the guide tells the legends behind it and where to see the collection. The walk then threads through Rue des Grands Carmes and Rue du Marché au Charbon, the old coal market, into the medieval street pattern of the Lower City.

Here the guide explains how the river Senne, once an open and polluted waterway through the centre, was covered over in the 1860s to create the grand central boulevards, and leads you to Place Saint-Géry, the former island where a tenth-century fort gave birth to Brussels. The old covered market in the middle of the square is now a lively meeting place. Expect about an hour in the Lower City.

The Saint-Hubert Royal Galleries and the chocolate tasting

Linking the Lower and Upper City, the Saint-Hubert Royal Galleries opened in 1847 and were the first grand covered shopping arcade in Europe, a glass-roofed passage of neoclassical facades, marble, theatres and chocolatiers. It is a natural place for the Belgian chocolate tasting included in this tour: the praline, a filled chocolate shell, was invented in Brussels in 1912, and the guide explains the difference between couverture, ganache and praline fillings while you sample traditional pieces from a local maker.

The galleries are also where the guide shares practical advice on where to buy good chocolate of real quality away from the tourist shops, which chocolatiers to seek out in the Sablon and which museums deserve a visit. The chocolate tasting is a small sampling to accompany the walk rather than a meal; waffles and other local specialities can be bought nearby at your own expense.

Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula

The Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula rises above the Treurenberg hill between the two halves of the city, a Gothic church built between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries with twin towers modelled on French cathedrals. This tour goes inside: you see the sixteenth-century stained glass windows donated by Habsburg rulers, the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament with its tall windows, and the extraordinary Baroque pulpit of carved oak showing the expulsion from paradise beneath a canopy of foliage. The cathedral hosts royal weddings and national ceremonies, which the guide puts into context.

Cathedral opening hours are generally daily from morning to evening, and entry to the nave is free; the crypt and the Romanesque remains of the earlier church under the floor can be visited separately. The visit inside takes around fifteen to twenty minutes before the walk continues up to the Royal Park.

Royal Park, Royal Palace and Place Royale

The Upper City was the quarter of the court and the nobility, laid out in the eighteenth century with straight avenues and neoclassical facades after the old Coudenberg palace burned down in 1731. The Royal Park, Brussels' first public park, stretches between the Royal Palace, the official workplace of the Belgian monarch which opens its state rooms to visitors each summer, and the Federal Parliament. The guide explains how the independence of Belgium was fought out in these streets in 1830.

The walk ends on Place Royale, the symmetrical square with its equestrian statue and the church of Saint-Jacques-sur-Coudenberg, where the excavated cellars and streets of the medieval Coudenberg palace lie beneath the pavement and can be visited as a museum. From the terrace of the neighbouring Mont des Arts gardens you look back over the whole Lower City you have just walked through, the perfect last photograph of a Brussels walking tour.