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Roots Earth in Brussels: audio stories about 51 places

Roots Earth has audio stories about 51 places in Brussels, Belgium, in Europe. The Brussels stories are in all seven Roots Earth languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The app needs no account: open Brussels, pick a place on the city's map of places and play. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection. The stories are written by local people.

The 51 places are listed below in the order the app shows them, and again further down with their coordinates. The lists were taken from the Roots Earth catalogue on 15 September 2026.

Published 16 September 2026. Markdown: brussels.md

The 51 places in Brussels with audio stories

In the order the app shows them.

  1. Grand-Place
  2. Manneken Pis
  3. Atomium
  4. Brussels Town Hall
  5. Maison du Roi (King's House)
  6. Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula
  7. Royal Palace of Brussels
  8. Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert
  9. Mont des Arts
  10. Church of Our Lady of the Sablon
  11. Place du Grand Sablon
  12. Palace of Justice
  13. Parc du Cinquantenaire
  14. Brussels Stock Exchange (La Bourse)
  15. Belgian Comic Strip Center
  16. Magritte Museum
  17. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium
  18. Place Royale
  19. Parc de Bruxelles
  20. Church of Our Lady of the Chapel
  21. Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Koekelberg)
  22. Halle Gate
  23. Church of Saint Nicholas
  24. Mini-Europe
  25. Musical Instruments Museum
  26. Place des Martyrs
  27. Congress Column
  28. Church of Saint James on Coudenberg
  29. Coudenberg Palace (Underground)
  30. Autoworld
  31. Train World
  32. Place Sainte-Catherine
  33. Old England Building
  34. Parlamentarium (European Parliament)
  35. The Marolles
  36. Jeu de Balle Flea Market
  37. Saint-Gilles
  38. Ixelles Ponds
  39. Matongé (African Quarter)
  40. Place Flagey
  41. Saint-Boniface Quarter
  42. Rue des Bouchers
  43. Dansaert Quarter
  44. Halles Saint-Géry
  45. Saint-Géry Island
  46. Place Jourdan
  47. Wolvendael Park
  48. Bois de la Cambre
  49. La Cambre Abbey
  50. Galerie Bortier
  51. Sainte-Catherine Fish Market

Is there an audio guide for Grand-Place?

Yes. Grand-Place has its audio stories in the Roots Earth app: a short introduction and a deeper story, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian.

It is place 1 of the 51 Brussels places in the app, at 50.84675, 4.35273. Every one of the other 50 places in the list above has the same two stories.

Roots Earth is not a guided tour: you choose the place on the city's map of places and play its story yourself.

How to use Roots Earth in Brussels

Open Roots Earth and choose Brussels. The city has its own map of places with all 51 of them on it. Tap the place you are standing in front of, or any other, and play its short introduction or its deeper story. You decide what to listen to and in which order.

You can listen in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian, and there is no account. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection.

In full

All 51 places in Brussels, in the app's order, with their coordinates.

All 51 places in Brussels, with coordinates

Every place below has a short introduction and a deeper story in the Roots Earth app, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The names, the coordinates (latitude, longitude) and the one line descriptions are the app's own catalogue values of 15 September 2026; a place without a line here has none that this page can print.

1. Grand-Place

Coordinates
50.84675, 4.35273
In one line
The central square of Brussels, ringed by gilded guildhalls, the Gothic Town Hall and the King's House. Rebuilt after a French bombardment in 1695, it is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the symbolic heart of the city.

2. Manneken Pis

Coordinates
50.845, 4.35
In one line
A small bronze fountain figure of a boy urinating, sculpted by Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder around 1619. Barely fifty-five centimeters tall, it is one of Brussels' best-loved symbols, famous for its huge wardrobe of costumes.

3. Atomium

Coordinates
50.895, 4.34155
In one line
A gleaming steel monument shaped like an iron crystal magnified billions of times, with nine spheres linked by tubes. Built for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, it stands about one hundred and two meters tall and remains a landmark of the city.

4. Brussels Town Hall

Coordinates
50.84653, 4.352
In one line
The Gothic city hall on the Grand-Place, built in the fifteenth century, with an ornate tower nearly one hundred meters tall crowned by a gilded statue of Saint Michael. Its facade bristles with sculpture, and the tower is famously off-center.

5. Maison du Roi (King's House)

Coordinates
50.84711, 4.35272
In one line
The ornate neo-Gothic building facing the Town Hall on the Grand-Place, known as the King's House in French and the Bread House in Dutch. Rebuilt in the late nineteenth century, it now houses the Brussels City Museum.

6. Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula

Coordinates
50.84778, 4.36028
In one line
The principal church of Brussels, dedicated to Saint Michael and Saint Gudula. Built in the Gothic style between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries, with twin west towers and renowned stained glass, it hosts royal weddings and state ceremonies.

7. Royal Palace of Brussels

Coordinates
50.842, 4.36222
In one line
The official palace of the King of the Belgians, used for state affairs rather than as a residence, facing Brussels Park. Largely shaped under King Leopold the Second, it is famous for a ceiling of beetle shells and opens to the public each summer.

8. Royal Galleries of Saint-Hubert

Coordinates
50.84833, 4.35472
In one line
A glass-roofed shopping arcade from 1847, among the oldest in Europe. Its long galleries of shops, cafes, and a theatre run beneath an elegant vaulted ceiling in the heart of old Brussels.

9. Mont des Arts

Coordinates
50.84417, 4.35694
In one line
A landscaped hilltop garden and civic complex linking the lower and upper towns. Its formal terraces, cultural institutions, and famous viewpoint over the rooftops have crowned central Brussels since the twentieth century.

10. Church of Our Lady of the Sablon

Coordinates
50.84139, 4.35528
In one line
A late Gothic church begun by the crossbowmen's guild, famous for its soaring interior and luminous stained glass. It grew from a humble chapel around a treasured statue of the Virgin Mary.

11. Place du Grand Sablon

Coordinates
50.84111, 4.35472
In one line
An elegant sloping square in the old upper town, famous for its weekend antiques market, celebrated chocolate shops, and grand townhouses. It takes its name from the sandy marshland it once was.

12. Palace of Justice

Coordinates
50.83583, 4.35083
In one line
A colossal nineteenth-century courthouse crowning the city, long among the largest buildings in the world. Its vast domed bulk and monumental, eclectic style dominate the Brussels skyline.

13. Parc du Cinquantenaire

Coordinates
50.84028, 4.39306
In one line
A grand public park built for Belgium's fiftieth anniversary, centred on a monumental triumphal arcade. Its sweeping lawns and museum-filled wings make it one of the city's great ceremonial spaces.

14. Brussels Stock Exchange (La Bourse)

Coordinates
50.84833, 4.34861
In one line
A grand nineteenth-century former stock exchange, lavishly carved with sculpture by leading artists. Once the temple of Belgian finance, it now welcomes the public as a landmark and cultural venue.

15. Belgian Comic Strip Center

Coordinates
50.85056, 4.35639
In one line
A museum of the ninth art housed in a luminous Art Nouveau department store designed by Victor Horta in 1906. It celebrates Belgium's comics tradition, from Tintin to the Smurfs, beneath glass roofs and ironwork.

16. Magritte Museum

Coordinates
50.84222, 4.35806
In one line
A museum devoted to the surrealist René Magritte, holding the world's largest collection of his work. It opened in 2009 inside an eighteenth-century neoclassical mansion on the Place Royale, with around two hundred paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

17. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

Coordinates
50.8425, 4.35861
In one line
Belgium's foremost art institution, founded in 1801, gathering several museums under one name. Its galleries hold more than twenty thousand works, from Bruegel and Rubens to modern masters, in a grand nineteenth-century building on the Coudenberg hill.

18. Place Royale

Coordinates
50.84222, 4.35917
In one line
A harmonious neoclassical square laid out between 1776 and 1782 on the site of the former Coudenberg Palace. Ringed by uniform white facades and a temple-like church, it centers on an equestrian statue of Godfrey of Bouillon.

19. Parc de Bruxelles

Coordinates
50.84556, 4.36278
In one line
A formal neoclassical park of around thirteen hectares laid out in the late eighteenth century on a former ducal hunting ground.

20. Church of Our Lady of the Chapel

Coordinates
50.83972, 4.34944
In one line
One of the oldest churches in Brussels, founded in 1134, blending Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque styles. The painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder is buried here, and a memorial honors him near the lower town and the Sablon.

21. Basilica of the Sacred Heart (Koekelberg)

Coordinates
50.86472, 4.31833
In one line
A vast Art Deco basilica in Koekelberg, commissioned by King Leopold II and built between 1905 and 1969 and inaugurated in 1970. Among the largest churches in the world and the biggest Art Deco building anywhere, it is crowned by a green copper dome reaching nearly ninety meters.

22. Halle Gate

Coordinates
50.83389, 4.34528
In one line
The last surviving gate of Brussels' second medieval wall, built in 1381 and saved from demolition by its many later uses. A romantic restoration gave it turrets and a conical roof, and today it houses a city-history museum.

23. Church of Saint Nicholas

Coordinates
50.84778, 4.35083
In one line
One of the oldest churches in Brussels, founded in the twelfth century and dedicated to Saint Nicholas, patron of merchants. Hidden among shops near the Bourse, it still holds a cannonball lodged in a pillar from the bombardment of 1695.

24. Mini-Europe

Coordinates
50.89472, 4.33889
In one line
A miniature park at the foot of the Atomium, opened in 1989, where the most famous monuments of the European Union are recreated at one twenty-fifth of their real size. Tiny trains run, Vesuvius erupts, and a whole continent fits in a single afternoon.

25. Musical Instruments Museum

Coordinates
50.84278, 4.35806
In one line
One of the world's great collections of musical instruments, housed since 2000 in the Art Nouveau Old England building on the Mont des Arts. Wireless headphones play each instrument as visitors approach, turning the displays into a living concert.

26. Place des Martyrs

Coordinates
50.85083, 4.35417
In one line
An elegant neoclassical square laid out in the 1770s, later renamed to honor those killed in the Belgian Revolution of 1830. A crypt beneath its paving holds the fallen, marked by a memorial monument at the center.

27. Congress Column

Coordinates
50.85056, 4.36444
In one line
A monumental column built between 1850 and 1859 to honor the congress that wrote Belgium's constitution. Designed by Joseph Poelaert, it carries a statue of King Leopold the First and shelters the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with its eternal flame.

28. Church of Saint James on Coudenberg

Coordinates
50.84167, 4.35972
In one line
A neoclassical church on the Place Royale, built between 1776 and 1787 to resemble a Greco-Roman temple. Once turned into a Temple of Reason during the French Revolution, it gained its dome in 1849 and is linked to the Belgian royal family.

29. Coudenberg Palace (Underground)

Coordinates
50.84278, 4.35944
In one line
Beneath the elegant Place Royale lies a vanished palace where Charles the Fifth once ruled an empire and handed it away. Walk its buried streets, cellars, and the great hall lost to fire long ago.

30. Autoworld

Coordinates
50.83972, 4.39333
In one line
Under a soaring iron and glass hall built for a world fair, hundreds of vintage cars trace the whole story of the motorcar, from fragile pioneers of the eighteen hundreds to the gleaming machines of the last century.

31. Train World

Coordinates
50.85972, 4.375
In one line
In a fairy-tale old station, a comic-book artist staged Belgium's railway story like a dream. Among the giants of steam waits the oldest preserved locomotive in a country that gave the continent its first railway.

32. Place Sainte-Catherine

Coordinates
50.85056, 4.34778
In one line
Once a harbour basin where boats unloaded their catch, this open square was filled in long ago. A grand church now rises where ships once moored, and the old fish market lives on in its seafood tables.

33. Old England Building

Coordinates
50.84278, 4.35806
In one line
A former department store wrapped in black iron and glass, this Art Nouveau gem now sings as a museum of musical instruments. Climb to its rooftop cafe for one of the finest views over the city.

34. Parlamentarium (European Parliament)

Coordinates
50.83861, 4.375
In one line
Step inside the visitor centre of the European Parliament, where interactive screens, a giant floor map of Europe, and a surround-screen theatre tell the story of how a continent of rivals chose to work together.

35. The Marolles

Coordinates
50.83694, 4.34722
In one line
The old working-class quarter wedged below the Palace of Justice, home to the Brusseleir dialect, a daily flea market and a long memory of poverty, resistance and a stubborn refusal to be tidied away.

36. Jeu de Balle Flea Market

Coordinates
50.83583, 4.34611
In one line
A flea market that fills a square in the Marolles every single morning of the year, where junk, treasure and the city's bargaining instinct spread across the cobbles. The beating heart of working-class Brussels.

37. Saint-Gilles

Coordinates
50.82694, 4.34556
In one line
A dense, diverse commune south of the centre, known for its Art Nouveau houses, Portuguese cafés, lively squares and a mix of artists, immigrants and old families that gives it one of the strongest local identities in Brussels.

38. Ixelles Ponds

Coordinates
50.825, 4.37194
In one line
Two long ponds in the heart of Ixelles, the last open water of a buried valley, ringed by Art Nouveau villas and willows. A quiet local escape where Brussels comes to walk, feed the ducks and slow down.

39. Matongé (African Quarter)

Coordinates
50.83472, 4.3675
In one line
The Congolese and African quarter of Brussels near Porte de Namur, named after a Kinshasa district. A few streets of grocers, hair salons, music and restaurants where the city's complicated colonial past and its African diaspora meet.

40. Place Flagey

Coordinates
50.8275, 4.37222
In one line
The big open square at the heart of Ixelles, dominated by the streamlined 1930s radio building locals call the ocean liner. A place of weekend markets, packed café terraces, festivals and everyday neighbourhood life.

41. Saint-Boniface Quarter

Coordinates
50.83611, 4.36639
In one line
A picturesque café-lined street around a neo-Gothic church in Ixelles, just beside Matongé. One of the most charming corners of bohemian-bourgeois Brussels, full of terraces, restaurants and easy neighbourhood evenings.

42. Rue des Bouchers

Coordinates
50.84833, 4.35361
In one line
A narrow medieval lane near the Grand-Place crammed with restaurants, seafood displays and persistent touts. Once the city's butchers' street, now a noisy, divisive emblem of old Brussels, home to a famous puppet theatre.

43. Dansaert Quarter

Coordinates
50.85028, 4.34472
In one line
The hip, Flemish-flavoured quarter around Rue Antoine Dansaert and Place Saint-Géry, known for fashion boutiques, the legendary founding spot of Brussels and a dense, ever-shifting nightlife near the old canal.

44. Halles Saint-Géry

Coordinates
50.84833, 4.3475
In one line
A restored covered market hall from the late nineteenth century, its iron-and-glass frame now sheltering a bar, exhibitions and events on the island where Brussels first took root.

45. Saint-Géry Island

Coordinates
50.84861, 4.34722
In one line
The original island in the Senne where Brussels is said to have been founded. The river now runs hidden underground, and the old quarter has become one of the city's busiest nightlife hearts.

46. Place Jourdan

Coordinates
50.83833, 4.38139
In one line
A lively square in Etterbeek, famous across the city for the fries at Maison Antoine. Here the international crowd of the European quarter mingles with the everyday life of an old Brussels neighbourhood.

47. Wolvendael Park

Coordinates
50.79778, 4.33833
In one line
A leafy park in the southern commune of Uccle, set around an elegant eighteenth-century manor house.

48. Bois de la Cambre

Coordinates
50.80278, 4.37722
In one line
A large landscaped park in southern Brussels that flows into the vast Sonian Forest. With its boating lake, winding drives and broad lawns, it is the city's favourite escape for Sunday walks and family outings.

49. La Cambre Abbey

Coordinates
50.8175, 4.37
In one line
A serene former Cistercian abbey founded in the late twelfth century, tucked into a valley in Ixelles. Its church, cloister and terraced French gardens make a tranquil green oasis hidden within the busy city.

50. Galerie Bortier

Coordinates
50.84583, 4.35472
In one line
A small, elegant covered shopping arcade from the mid-nineteenth century, long beloved by book lovers for its second-hand and antiquarian bookshops. A romantic, easily missed gem in the centre of Brussels.

51. Sainte-Catherine Fish Market

Coordinates
50.85139, 4.34722
In one line
The old fish-market quarter around Place Sainte-Catherine, where the city's former docks were filled in. Seafood restaurants now line the long open space, keeping alive a maritime tradition in the heart of Brussels.

Roots Earth in short

Roots Earth has audio stories about 5,665 places in 130 cities, 25 countries and 6 regions, written by local people.

  • No account
  • Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection
  • Audio stories in English and German in every city, and in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian in 126 of the 130 cities

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