Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium occupy a cluster of buildings on Rue de la Régence beside Place Royale, in the Mont des Arts and Sablon district of Brussels. The complex is the country's principal national art collection and is divided into several linked museums that share one entrance hall and ticket. The Oldmasters Museum houses Flemish and Dutch painting from the 15th to the 18th centuries, with rooms devoted to Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Rubens, Jordaens, Van Dyck and followers of Hieronymus Bosch. Bruegel's Fall of Icarus and the dark, crowded Census at Bethlehem are among the best-known canvases, and the Rubens galleries fill tall, skylit halls built for large altarpieces. The Fin-de-Siècle Museum, in the lower levels, presents Belgian Symbolism, Impressionism and Art Nouveau-era works by artists such as Fernand Khnopff, Jean Delville and James Ensor, together with sculpture and decorative arts. The modern wing contains 20th-century Belgian and international work. The neighbouring Magritte Museum is a separate institution within the same group, and combined tickets allow both to be seen in one day. A visit to the Oldmasters and Fin-de-Siècle sections typically takes two to three hours, and a focused walk through only the Flemish primitives and Bruegel rooms can be done in about ninety minutes. Weekday afternoons are usually the quietest period, while weekends and school holidays bring the largest crowds, especially in the Bruegel rooms. Tourists arriving by metro can use lines 1 and 5 to Parc or Gare Centrale and walk about eight minutes uphill, and the Royal Palace tram stops are close by. The museum shop and cafe are in the entrance hall, and the surrounding Sablon antiques quarter and the Mont des Arts gardens make a natural continuation of the day. Visitors who want photographs of the building's neoclassical facade often shoot from the steps of Place Royale. Audio guides in several languages are generally available, and the first Wednesday afternoon of the month is often discounted. Brussels, Belgium's capital region, has few collections of comparable breadth, so the museum functions as the principal introduction to Belgian art history.