Brussels' Comic Strip Route: A Newcomer's Guide to the City's Open-Air Art Museum

Most newcomers spend their first few weeks in Brussels noticing the grand stuff: the Grand-Place, the EU buildings, the endless roundabouts. Then, at some point, usually while looking for a street name, they turn a corner and find a three-storey mural of Tintin climbing down a rope, or the Smurfs marching across a gable wall. That's when it clicks: this city doesn't just tolerate comic strips, it was built by them, and it still wears them proudly on its walls.

If you're new here, the Comic Strip Route (Parcours BD / Stripmuur Route) is one of the best free things to do in the city, and one of the few activities that works equally well as a sunny walk or a rainy-day plan B. Here's what it actually is, why it exists, and how to see it properly.

Why Brussels, of all places?

Belgium calls itself the birthplace of the "ninth art," and it's not exaggerating much. Hergé (creator of Tintin), Peyo (the Smurfs), Morris (Lucky Luke), and André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe, Marsupilami) were all Belgian, and several worked and lived in and around Brussels. The city has more comic artists per capita than almost anywhere else, and it leaned into that identity hard starting in the 1990s, when it began commissioning large-scale murals on blank building facades across the centre.

Today there are 60-plus official murals scattered through the city, maintained by the city government and regularly restored. They're not tourist-trap decorations bolted on for Instagram; they're a genuine piece of how Brussels sees itself, alongside beer, chocolate, and complaining about the rain.

The essentials: where to start

You don't need a guided tour or an app to enjoy this (though a map helps, see below). A good half-day loop through the historic centre covers most of the highlights:

Rue de l'Étuve / Stoofstraat, just off the Grand-Place, has a Tintin mural that's usually the first one people stumble on.
Rue du Marché au Charbon area is dense with murals within a five-minute walk of each other.
The Comic Strip Centre (Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée / Belgisch Stripcentrum), housed in a stunning Victor Horta Art Nouveau building near Rue des Sables, is the indoor anchor of the whole experience. It's a proper museum with original artwork, a huge library, and exhibits that rotate through different artists and series.
The Marolles neighbourhood, just below the Palais de Justice, has several murals worked into its steep, cobbled streets, a good excuse to combine the walk with a stop at the Jeu de Balle flea market if it's a weekend.

Brussels' official tourism site, visit.brussels, publishes an up-to-date interactive map of every mural, which is worth pulling up on your phone since new ones are added and old ones occasionally get relocated or restored.

Why it's a genuinely good newcomer activity

A few reasons this deserves a spot on your list in the first months, beyond "the art is nice":

It's free and flexible. Walking the outdoor route costs nothing and can be stretched into a two-hour wander or compressed into a 20-minute detour on your way somewhere else. Only the Comic Strip Centre itself charges an entry fee.

It's a genuinely good rainy-day/sunny-day hybrid. Belgian weather doesn't always cooperate, especially heading into autumn, so having a plan that flexes between "walk outside" and "duck into a museum when it starts pouring" is genuinely useful here in a way it isn't in most cities.

It doubles as a neighbourhood tour. Because the murals are spread across the historic centre, the Marolles, and Sainte-Catherine, following the route is a low-effort way to actually learn the layout of downtown Brussels instead of just commuting through it. If you're still getting your bearings, pair this with a browse of our neighbourhood guides to see which areas you're walking through.

It's a great low-key social outing. A comic walk followed by a beer on a terrace is an easy, low-pressure way to spend a Saturday with new coliving housemates or people you've just met, no reservations, no real planning, just good conversation while you wander.

Making a day of it

A route that works well for a first-timer:

Start at the Grand-Place and walk to the nearby Tintin mural on Rue de l'Étuve.
Wander north through the Rue du Marché au Charbon / Bourse area, picking up 4-5 more murals as you go.
Head toward Rue des Sables and spend an hour or two inside the Comic Strip Centre.
If you've still got energy (and daylight), continue south to the Marolles for the last cluster of murals and a coffee or beer break.

Bring comfortable shoes; Brussels' cobblestones are charming and unforgiving in equal measure. If you want a concrete calendar of exhibitions, openings, or comic-related events happening on a given weekend, brusselskitchen.com and visit.brussels both publish current listings, since specific events change from month to month.

Beyond the murals: the wider comic culture

If the route hooks you, Brussels rewards going deeper:

Specialist comic shops are scattered through the centre and Saint-Géry, many stocking both mainstream Franco-Belgian series and independent and self-published work.
Brüsel and similar bookshops are well known among locals for curated selections and the occasional signing event.
The Festival de la BD and various smaller comic-related pop-ups happen through the year; check visit.brussels closer to the date if you want to catch one.
Comic strips even show up in the metro: several stations have permanent comic-themed decoration, so keep an eye out on your daily commute.

A good excuse to explore, especially if you're new

If you've recently landed in Brussels through coliving or you're still weighing your options, activities like this are a good low-cost way to get oriented and meet people without the pressure of "networking." Coliving houses often end up doing exactly this kind of outing together, since it's easy to organise and works for almost any group size. If you're browsing coliving operators and want to compare who's active in which part of the city, our directory of Brussels coliving operators is a good place to start, and for a broader sense of how to spend a slow weekend once you've settled in, see our guide to the perfect Sunday in Brussels.

Whatever else is on your list for your first autumn here, block out a couple of hours for this one. It's free, it's outdoors (mostly), and it might be the single best way to understand why Belgians take their comics as seriously as their beer.