Brussels Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour

Grand-Place and Manneken Pis

The second stop on the central route, on Rue du Lombard, puts you a minute from the Grand-Place, the central square of Brussels and the reason most people come. The square is enclosed by the Gothic City Hall with its 96-metre tower, the King's House opposite and the gilded guild houses rebuilt in Baroque style after the French bombardment of 1695; every facade carries the emblem of the guild that built it. A short walk down Rue de l'Étuve brings you to Manneken Pis, the small bronze fountain of a boy that has been a city mascot since the seventeenth century and is dressed in a different costume on many days.

A hop-on hop-off bus is the easiest way to combine the Grand-Place with the outer sights, because the historic centre itself is pedestrian and best explored on foot. Allow at least an hour and a half here for the square, the fountain, the Saint-Hubert Royal Galleries and the chocolate shops of the surrounding lanes before catching the next bus.

Place Royale, Mont des Arts and the Sablon

The Place Royale stop, on Rue de la Régence, lands you in the elegant Upper Town. The neoclassical square was laid out in the eighteenth century on the site of the old Coudenberg palace, whose excavated cellars can be visited beneath it, and it is framed by the Royal Palace, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and the Musical Instruments Museum in its iron-and-glass former department store. Steps away, the terraced gardens of Mont des Arts open the best panoramic view over the old town, with the City Hall spire in the centre.

Towards the south, Rue de la Régence leads to the Sablon quarter, known for its Gothic church of Notre-Dame du Sablon, antique dealers and the city's finest chocolatiers. Place Royale is where visitors wondering is Brussels worth visiting for museums should hop off: the Fine Arts museums, the Coudenberg excavations and the musical instruments collection sit within two hundred metres of the stop and can fill half a day.

The Palace of Justice and Avenue Louise

The Poelaert stop stands beside the Palace of Justice, the colossal courthouse completed in 1883 and said to be the largest building constructed anywhere in the nineteenth century, crowned by a dome more than a hundred metres high. From the Place Poelaert terrace in front of it a glass lift drops into the Marolles, the old working-class district famous for its daily flea market on Place du Jeu de Balle, vintage shops and traditional eateries, and the view from the terrace stretches across the roofs of the lower city to the Atomium on the horizon.

The stop also serves Avenue Louise, the boulevard of designer boutiques, and the Art Nouveau streets around it where the architect-designed townhouses of the early twentieth century are concentrated, including house museums a short tram ride away. Many people use this stop in the late afternoon for shopping before riding back to Place Royale or Central Station.

The European Quarter and Cinquantenaire Park

Two stops on the central route cover the institutional heart of Europe. Place du Luxembourg faces the European Parliament, whose glass hemicycle can be visited with the free Parlamentarium visitor centre and the House of European History close by; the square's cafés fill with staff from the institutions at lunchtime. The next stop, Cinquantenaire, serves the park of the same name, created for the fiftieth anniversary of Belgian independence in 1880 and dominated by its triumphal arch topped with a bronze chariot.

Around the arch stand three museums, the Art and History Museum, the Royal Military Museum with its aircraft hall and Autoworld with its classic cars, so this is a stop where a family can easily spend two hours. The open top deck gives a clear view of the arch as the bus turns through the park, which is why a Brussels bus tour is the simplest way to get to the Cinquantenaire from the centre.

Atomium and Mini-Europe on the Heysel plateau

The second route runs north from Central Station via Rogier to the Heysel plateau, where the Atomium rises 102 metres into the sky: nine steel spheres linked by tubes, built for the 1958 World Exhibition to represent an iron crystal enlarged 165 billion times. Lifts and escalators take you through the spheres to exhibition rooms and a top-sphere panorama over Brussels and the Flemish countryside. Next to it, Mini-Europe reproduces about 350 landmarks of the European Union's countries at a scale of 1:25, from Big Ben to the Grand-Place itself, with moving trains and erupting volcanoes that children adore.

How to get to the Atomium is one of the most common questions about Brussels; with this ticket you simply board the Atomium route, which runs every two hours from 10:00 with a last departure at 16:00, so check the timetable before you hop off. Entry to the Atomium and Mini-Europe is not included; plan around two to three hours on the plateau.

Central Station, Rogier and the downtown boulevards

Both routes start at Central Station on Rue du Cardinal Mercier, the hub between the old town and the Upper Town where trains from the airport and from Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent arrive, which makes it the natural first stop of the day. The Atomium route then crosses the central boulevards via De Brouckère, the square of grand nineteenth-century hotels and theatres at the heart of the pedestrian zone, and Rogier, the gateway to the Rue Neuve shopping street and the northern business district.

These downtown stops are practical rather than scenic: use De Brouckère to reach the covered Saint-Catherine fish market quarter and the Bourse, and Rogier for the shopping streets. The best time to ride the open top deck is the first bus at 10:00, when the streets are quiet and the light on the Grand-Place facades is at its clearest; the onboard app shows where every bus is in real time.