Brussels-Midi Layover: Saint-Gilles on Foot
Part of the full Brussels Layover: Grand-Place and Sablon, BRU
Brussels-Midi station stands in Saint-Gilles rather than the old center of Brussels, which puts the Hannon house and its Émile Gallé interiors, a Sunday street market of more than 450 traders, and the 1904 town hall on Place Maurice Van Meenen all within a twenty-minute walk.
The Hannon house was furnished throughout by Émile Gallé
Jules Brunfaut built it in 1902 on the corner where Avenue Brugmann meets Avenue de la Jonction, for Édouard and Marie Hannon, and the commission was unusual in that the furniture came from one hand: Émile Gallé, the Nancy glassmaker and cabinetmaker, supplied the interiors throughout. Paul Baudouin painted the frescoes up the stairwell and across the reception room, and the Hannons hung the rest with Ensor, Rousseau and Claus.
It spent decades empty and reopened as a house-museum on 1 June 2023, three floors of it, 14 euros for an adult, and it takes about 45 minutes to walk round. The catch for a flight-day visit is the calendar rather than the price: it opens Thursday from 1pm, Friday from 11am, and weekends from 10am, and stays shut Monday to Wednesday. A pass covering three Art Nouveau interiors includes this one and is worth the arithmetic if you plan to see more than one of them.
Brussels-Midi’s Sunday market runs for more than a kilometre
Every Sunday from six in the morning, more than 450 traders set up along the boulevards on the station’s southern side and keep going until the early afternoon. It is a working market rather than a tourist one: produce, fish, olives, flowers, bolts of fabric, bicycles and clothing rails, with North African and Mediterranean grocers making up much of it, and the prices reflect that nobody here is selling souvenirs.
The produce gets picked over by about eleven, so early is better, and the whole thing dissolves gradually rather than at a posted closing time. One practical note about doing any of this from Brussels-Midi: the concourse by platforms 1 and 2 is where everyone bound for London queues for two passport checks, and it is the tightest floor space in the building, so it is worth crossing it without a suitcase to steer.
Place Maurice Van Meenen and the Saint-Gilles town hall
Albert Dumont finished the town hall in 1904, and it is much grander than a commune of this size would suggest: neo-Flemish Renaissance, stone and brick, carved figures set between the upper windows, with a belfry over the roofline. Around twenty artists worked on the rooms inside, including a wall-sized Alfred Stevens and Henri Gervex canvas of Napoleon entering Paris.
The square in front of it is the reason to come rather than the building: benches, plane trees, and the cafes along the edges, which is where the commune actually sits in the afternoon. It costs nothing, and it is a better place to run down a spare hour than any bench inside the station. This is a slower, more residential few hours than the main Brussels guide covers, which stays in the guildhall-and-arcade core about three kilometres north.
The airport train from Brussels-Midi takes about 22 minutes
Trains to Brussels Airport-Zaventem run four to six times an hour from here, taking about 22 minutes, against roughly 17 from Brussels-Central and about 15 from Brussels-Nord, and they go from around 5:30 in the morning until around 23:30. The fare is the same wherever you board, a little over 11 euros, because the fixed 6.90-euro airport supplement makes up most of it regardless of distance.
Being the furthest out cuts both ways: Midi is where the international trains terminate, so if you are connecting from London, Paris or Cologne you are already here and the extra five minutes is nothing. Work backwards from the door-to-door figure rather than the 22, collect the bag first, and give the walk back up from the platforms its own few minutes.
Frequently asked questions
Does any of this work on a Monday or Tuesday?
The market and the square do; the Art Nouveau interiors mostly do not. The Hannon house opens Thursday to Sunday only, and the Horta Museum on Rue Américaine, the other Art Nouveau house within walking distance of the station, closes on Mondays. Between Monday and Wednesday the Saint-Gilles part of this trip is an outdoor one: the facades are the point, and the best of them are on Avenue Brugmann and the streets off it, which cost nothing and never close. The Sunday market obviously only runs on Sundays.
How early do I need to be at Brussels-Midi for a Eurostar to London?
Gates close 30 minutes before departure for Standard and Plus tickets and 15 minutes before for Premier, and Eurostar's own advice is to be at the check-in area 45 to 60 minutes ahead. The reason it takes longer than a domestic train is that your passport gets checked twice, once by Belgian authorities and again by UK Border Force, before you reach the departure lounge. Trains to Paris, Amsterdam and Cologne from the same station have no border check and no gate closure, so those you can walk onto a few minutes before departure.
Is the Sunday market worth it with only a couple of hours?
Yes, because it starts at the station door rather than a tram ride away. Traders are set up by 6am and the market winds down through the early afternoon, and the produce stalls are picked over by about 11am, so an early arrival gets the better of it. An hour is enough to walk the length of it and back, and Sunday is the one morning the rest of Saint-Gilles is still asleep, so the market and the walk up to it fit together better than they look on a map.
How long is the walk from Brussels-Midi into Saint-Gilles?
About twenty minutes on foot to the middle of Saint-Gilles, and a little less to Place Maurice Van Meenen. It is uphill most of the way, since the station sits low and the commune rises south of it, but the route is pavement throughout with no steps. Trams run the same way from outside the station if you would rather not walk it, and the ride is a few minutes.