Surrealist Brussels

A way of life

Musée Magritte Museum - © visit.brussels - Jean-Paul Remy, MusÃ©e Magritte Museum - © visit.brussels - Jean-Paul Remy

In Belgium, surreal art is something of a national pastime! Let your subconscious wander, take a dreamy detour and add a little poetry to your life with these utterly surreal places, exhibitions and events!

Surrealism, with a Belgian touch : a century-old story

In Paris in 1924, André Breton published his "Manifesto of Surrealism", defining what was to become a major avant-garde artistic movement. Brussels quickly became the epicentre of Belgian Surrealism, home to the auspicious paintbrushes of René Magritte and Jane Graverol, and the creative writing of Paul Nougé and Marcel Mariën.

Musée Magritte Museum

The Musée Magritte Museum, located in the heart of Brussels, brings together the world's largest collection of the renowned surrealist artist René Magritte: 230 works and archives are displayed. The multidisciplinary space houses paintings, gouaches, drawings, sculptures, and painted objects, as well as advertising posters, musical scores, photographs and films. The Museum also has the most important collection from the artist’s "vache" period. The selection of works exhibited in the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium is constantly expanding with a changing selection of external loans. With the support of Belgian and foreign museums as well as private collectors, works are being made available that have previously never been exhibited. The visitor can thus discover many treasures that are still in private possession. The Musée Magritte Museum has already received 8 nominations and prizes. Every year more than 300,000 visitors come here for all over the world to discover the life and the works of René Magritte.

La Fleur en Papier Doré

The Gilt Paper Flower, a listed building since 1997, has for decades been a meeting place for locals and tourists alike, whether curious about or fascinated by the history of this 17th-century building. An estaminet for a long time under the premonitory name of Café des artistes, the Flower soon became what it is famous for today: the place where artists, particularly the Surrealists (Marcel Mariën, René Magritte, Louis Scutenaire, etc.) and the Cobras (Dotremont, Alechinski, etc.), met in an infernal flea market setting. Open Monday to Sunday from 8am to midnight, La Fleur en Papier Doré offers a range of local produce (including Verschueren saison, beers from the De Ranke brewery, and Stouterik on draught from Brasseries de la Senne), which can be enjoyed with a portion of cheese or sausage. Since its reopening in May 2023, The Gilt Paper Flower has closed its kitchen to concentrate on its role as a café. The venue also has two rooms where the public can enjoy a programme of lectures, concerts, poetry and literature...

La Fleur en Papier Doré

René Magritte Museum (house)

The René Magritte Museum is situated in the house where the famous, surrealist artist lived and worked for 24 years (1930-54). Magritte lived on the ground floor and built in the back of the garden Studio Dongo, where he executed designs for publicity work. He painted most of the time in the living room annex atelier. In that room he would produce more or less half the amount of his paintings and gouaches. The headquarters of the Belgian Surrealists was also in the Esseghemstraat 135, where they held their meetings on Saturday evenings and where they organized several tableaux vivants. The Museum of Abstract Art is located in the adjacent building. www.abstractartmuseum.be Visits at weekends: only via online reservation.

René Magritte Museum (house)

The Magritte Fountain

On the pleasant place de Ninove you will come across rather a strange fountain. If you stand back and look at it from a distance you will discover its secret. Placed on a base in blue stone, the basin is cut in the shape of Magritte's profile and topped by a jet of water which, when falling into the basin, forms the profile of the surrealist painter. This fountain is the work of the Italian artist Luca Maria Patella in cooperation with the Comité des Arts Urbains.

The Magritte Fountain

René Magritte, L'empire des lumières (1954) © Ch. Herscovici, avec son aimable autorisation co SABAM Belgium, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, J. Ge

Magritte in the city ! ☁️🍏

Brussels wouldn't be Brussels without Magritte. His surrealist spirit and unbridled creativity have infused its streets with a magical je ne sais quoi! Exhibitions, landmarks, shops - follow in the footsteps of the most endearing surrealist of them all…

Read our article

Surrealism is part of Brussels’ DNA

In Brussels, surrealism is more than just an artistic movement: it's a way of life! Poetic, surprising, sometimes chaotic, the Belgian capital practices the art of the offbeat with legendary self-deprecation. You'll have felt it, the surrealist spirit and Brussels' very particular 'zwanze' brand is alive and well around every corner. From its architecture, which plays on contrasts; to the cheekiness of its zinnekes (a nickname given to the people of Brussels) and its philosophy of the absurd, Brussels is as mystifying as it is endearing! 

Did you say surrealist?

Here are but a few of the monuments and symbols that typify Brussels' surrealism...

The Manneken-Pis

The country’s most famous child

Zinneke Pis

The epitome of Brussels' humour

The Atomium

A unique architecture!

panorama - vue aérienne - heysel - matin

Jeanneke Pis

A stone’s throw from the Grand-Place

Vaartkapoen

A challenge to authority

Madame Chapeau

Always leaves her hat on

Bar Magritte

A place to meet, greet, eat, drink and play by Brussels’ Grand-Place. A space for candlelit conversations and chess, live music and late nights.

Bar Magritte

Train World

Train World is a unique railway experience that takes you from the very first steam locomotives to the flashing high-speed trains! It is a universe that appeals to all the senses in order to grasp the many different dimensions of the railways. A visit to Train World is an active and surprising outing. You can walk among locomotives, take a seat in 100-year-old trains, visit a railway house and walk across a real railway bridge. You will even experience how it feels to drive a train!

Train World

Autrique House

Maison Autrique is the very first striking building Victor Horta designed. It was built in 1893 and it's a major part of Brussels' architectural patrimonium. It underwent an exemplary restoration and is now open to the public. This house is an important Art Nouveau touchstone: we can already see elements that form a part of the continual explorations of the architect. It's interior division is full of surprises: François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters have staged an original scenography, from the cellar to the attic. The house has thus become a sort of tribute to Brussels' private architecture, while at the same time tickling the imagination. The house hosts intimate concerts, temporary exhibitions and workshops for children.

Autrique House

Fantastic Art Museum

Brussels is fantastic! This museum, one of the most atypical of Brussels, presents pieces of different generations which all link to the fantastic, the strange or surrealism. Its collection mixes many techniques and invites on a journey through the imaginary. Conceived as a cabinet of curiosities, the museum is sure to offer visitors a fantastic and unique walkthrough. As would Bosch, Breughel, Delvaux, Magritte, Hergé or Rops, you will not be able to ignore this spooky place in the heart of Brussels!

Fantastic Art Museum

Home Frit' Home

Sewer Museum

Why not visit the Brussels sewers and the Sewers museum during your next excursion in Brussels. A visit of Brussels' sewerage network - led by experienced guides or ex-workers - is extraordinary, full of surprises, but above all fascinating. The sewers have become vital to our way of life, so much so that it's hard to imagine what it was like before they existed. A visit of the Sewers Museum (and a real sewer!) is therefore an amazing, unusual and thrilling experience. Brussels' first sewerage network came into use in the 17th century, but they were very limited and a large part of the city's waste still found its way into the river Senne. The river carried waste and carrion and regularly overflowed, or dried out in the summer, leaving behind less-than-pleasant smells. It was partially due to this, that the government in the second half of the 19th century decided to completely transform the Senne and its neighbouring streets by building great boulevards to cover the insalubrious area. Between the two world wars a second transformation: a portion of the Senne was diverted and then covered over. The sewerage network improved and grew over the years, going from 45 km in 1847 to the 350 km that we have today. The entrance to the museum is housed in one of the toll pavilions that used to collect taxes on goods that entered the city.

Sewer Museum

Place de Ninove - Près de la fontaine Magritte