ब्रसेल्स Audio Tours

Brussels operates in three official languages (French, Dutch and German), houses the institutions of the European Union and NATO, and still manages to feel like a city that is not primarily performing for anyone's benefit. The Grand Place, a market square surrounded by 17th-century guildhalls built in Flemish Baroque style, was described by Victor Hugo as 'the most beautiful square in the world.' It was almost destroyed in 1695 when Louis XIV ordered French artillery to bombard it for two days. The guilds rebuilt within four years, which says something about the relationship between beauty and stubbornness that Belgium seems to have made its operating principle.

The beer culture here is not a scene or an affectation -- it is infrastructure.

Lambic ales brewed by spontaneous fermentation have been made in the Brussels region for centuries; Cantillon brewery in Anderlecht has been operating since 1900 and offers tours of the cobwebbed kettles and barrels that produce some of the world's most complex sour beers. The Art Nouveau architecture of Victor Horta, who designed buildings in Brussels in the 1890s and early 1900s that changed the relationship between iron and ornament, is scattered through the Saint-Gilles and Ixelles neighbourhoods and includes the Horta Museum. The comic strip mural trail covers 60 large-format murals painted on gable walls across the city -- because Tintin and the Smurfs and Lucky Luke were all Belgian, which surprises more visitors than it should.