Museums & Art Guides

35 guides

The art trail runs strongest through Flanders. In Ghent, St Bavo's Cathedral keeps the van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece in the building it was made for, while the MSK holds almost 10,000 works across six centuries. Bruges places Memling's paintings inside the medieval Sint-Janshospitaal and adds the Groeningemuseum, and Antwerp pairs Rubens's altarpieces in the cathedral with his grave at St James' Church.

Smaller cities reward a slower pace. Leuven's M Leuven and Sint-Pieterskerk share Dieric Bouts, Liège's La Boverie closes on Mondays, and Namur's art is gallery-led rather than museum-heavy, best given half a day. Ostend splits between Mu.ZEE, whose main building is closed for renovation, and the Ensor House.

Visitors often trip on closures and styles: La Boverie's Monday shut, Mu.ZEE's renovation, Namur's cathedral being the only academic Late Baroque one in Belgium. Ypres and Bastogne shift the focus to war, with the In Flanders Fields Museum in the rebuilt Cloth Hall and the Bastogne War Museum, whose ticket also covers the Bois Jacques battlefield and War Rooms.