Brussels-Central Layover: 90 Minutes on Foot
Part of the full Brussels Layover: Grand-Place and Sablon, BRU
Brussels-Central sits directly under the slope between the lower and upper town, which puts the burned palace beneath Place Royale, the glass rotunda in the Galerie Ravenstein and the Mont des Arts terrace all within five minutes of the station’s Cantersteen exit.
Victor Horta drew Brussels-Central and never saw it open
The commission came to Horta in 1910, and he was still working the design out through the 1930s: a lozenge-shaped block with one long face onto the Cantersteen and an overhang at street level for arriving cars. Two wars, a funding crisis and Horta’s death in 1947 got in the way. Maxime Brunfaut finished it to Horta’s plans and added the underground passages and the line out to the airport, and the station finally opened on 4 October 1952, forty-two years after it was commissioned. Nothing about it looks like the Art Nouveau he is known for; this is the sober, stripped, late Horta.
The palace under Place Royale burned in 1731
Fire started in the kitchens on the night of 3 February 1731 and took the Coudenberg palace with it: the residence of the dukes of Brabant and later of Charles V, gone in hours along with its archives and its art. Rather than clear the ruins, the eighteenth century levelled what was left and built a neoclassical square straight over the top, which is why Place Royale is so flat and so regular compared with everything downhill of it.
What survived is underneath. Excavation opened up the palace’s lower storeys, a stretch of the Rue Isabelle and the shell of the great hall, and you walk through them at the level the servants used. Access is through the BELvue museum on Place des Palais, which shares one entrance with the site: 18 euros covers both and under-18s go free, and the museum ticket can be booked ahead with an audio guide. Both close on Mondays. Reckon on an hour underground, which is the single biggest claim on a short gap.
The Galerie Ravenstein hides a glass rotunda halfway along
Alexis and Philippe Dumont built the arcade between 1954 and 1958 to hold eighty-one shops, and set it into the hillside so that its two ends open at street level ten metres apart in height. The join between them is the good part: a circular hall, balconied on two levels, roofed with a wide latticed dome, sitting in the middle of an otherwise ordinary passage.
It costs nothing, it is a public right of way rather than a mall, and it takes two minutes to cross. The ceilings above both entrances carry murals, star constellations at one end and Egyptian figures at the other, which almost nobody passing through on a commute looks up at. Worth knowing before you set out from the platforms: Brussels-Central sits two levels below the street and several of its escalators run one direction only, so the last leg up is stairs more often than not.
The Mont des Arts terrace looks straight down the lower town
The terrace is a formal garden cut into the slope, hedges and flowerbeds stepped down between two long stone wings, with the drop framing a view north over the roofs of the lower town to the Town Hall spire on the Grand-Place. It is the shortest walk on this page, three minutes from the station’s upper exit.
There is no gate and no admission, and it is one of the few stops in the center that works as well at eleven at night as at eleven in the morning. Benches along the upper edge face the view, which makes it a better place to wait out a spare forty minutes than the station concourse below.
The airport platforms sit two levels under Brussels-Central
Add minutes to whatever the timetable tells you, because the descent from the Cantersteen entrance runs down two underground levels and several of the escalators between them go one way only. The ride itself is about 17 minutes to Brussels Airport-Zaventem, four to six an hour, from roughly 5:30 in the morning until roughly 23:30 at night.
The fare is a little over 11 euros and most of that is the flat 6.90-euro airport supplement, so boarding here rather than at Brussels-Nord saves a couple of minutes and no money at all. Budget half an hour door to door from anywhere on this page rather than the 17, and collect your bag before you start down.
Frequently asked questions
Can I actually see anything in ninety minutes at Brussels-Central?
Yes, because everything on this page is inside a five-minute radius of the station. The Ravenstein arcade and the Mont des Arts terrace together take about half an hour at a slow pace and cost nothing, which leaves room to get back down to the platforms without hurrying. The underground palace needs longer: budget an hour for it and the museum above it, and skip it if the gap is genuinely ninety minutes. Anything further, the Grand-Place and the arcades north of it, belongs to the longer Brussels itinerary rather than this one.
Which exit from Brussels-Central should I use?
The Cantersteen side, on the upper level, for everything on this page. The platforms sit two levels below street and the station has exits at both the lower Carrefour de l'Europe end and the higher Cantersteen end, which is the one that puts you level with the Ravenstein arcade and the climb to Place Royale. Several of the connecting escalators run one way only, so the route you came down by is not always a route back up.
Is the underground palace open on a Monday?
No. Both the BELvue museum and the Coudenberg site below it close on Mondays, and they share one entrance on Place des Palais, so a Monday closes the whole thing rather than half of it. The rest of the days it runs 9:30 to 17:00 Tuesday to Friday and 10:30 to 18:00 at weekends. The square above it, the Ravenstein arcade and the Mont des Arts terrace are outdoors or public passages and have no closing day at all.
What is there to do around Brussels-Central late in the evening?
The Mont des Arts terrace, mostly. It has no gate and no hours, the lower town lights up below it, and the Town Hall spire is floodlit, which makes it the one stop here that is arguably better after dark than in daylight. The museums are long shut by then and the arcade shops with them, though the passage through the Galerie Ravenstein stays walkable. Trains to the airport run until around 23:30, so a late look at the view is compatible with a late flight.