Photo courtesy of Best of Holland, Belgium & Luxembourg.

It is so easy to overlook Belgium, despite the fact that Brussels is among the most powerful cities in the world with many of Europe’s most powerful institutions headquartered there, from the European Union (EU) to NATO. Europe locates its big institutions of solidarity among the Belgians because Belgians move so easily among other Europeans, whether it’s the French to their south, the Germans to their east or the Dutch to their north.

A former director of the Belgian Tourist Office, Federique Raymakers, once summed up Belgium’s charms nicely, “Art, food, fashion, beer and chocolate all point to something more than just a set of attractions, but to a way of life. The most famous square in Brussels, the Grand Plaza, has all of the historic and aesthetic elements one associates with a big attraction, but it’s probably most famous for its restaurants, for the living one gets to have there.”

The capital, Brussels, is a city whose architectural feel may be Art Nouveau, but whose spirit is global. An enormous percentage of the citizens are expatriates working in one of the big European institutions. It’s a walker’s city noted for antique stores, too many restaurants to count, flea markets for day-trippers and fine jazz clubs at night.

Between the nation’s many masterpieces of painting, castles, gardens, cathedrals, fashion, festivals, beer, food, chocolate, shopping, relaxation, and comic strips, it can be hard to narrow down a list. Just the same, we have made an attempt at the following four reasons you should visit Belgium.

Ease of Transport

Comfort is a genuine Belgian value and for the traveler that begins with the convenience of traveling to it and within it. Belgium is just about the size of Maryland, has a wonderful rail system and several must see cities all within an easy distance of each other.

It’s easy to get to Brussels from London or Paris by Eurostar and it’s just a two- or three- hour drive from Amsterdam. Rail Europe’s Thalys zips between Paris’s Gare du Nord to Brussels’ Gare du Midi in 85 minutes. The country sits squarely in the middle of Western Europe which has made it a crossroads for trade and trade generates cultural cross-pollination.                

History

It’s a big year of commemorating memories for a country so covered with battlefields. Just as Europe today confers and negotiates in Belgium through the office of the European Commission and the EU, it used to do its fighting in Belgium, as witnessed by the battlefields of Waterloo, the Bulge and grittiest of all those Flanders fields in places like Ypres where tens of thousands lost their lives.

But war isn’t the only activity that people engaged in in the past. In small cities such as Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp the groundwork for global trade was laid in the medieval production and marketing of cloth. In Ypres, the medieval Cloth Hall was the first secular building in Europe to be done in the Gothic manner, a style that had been previously used only for religious buildings.

Art

The painters of the Northern Renaissance reacted to the Italian Renaissance painters with a brand of art that looked at life square in the face, with its ugliness and its beauty fully intact. Pieter Breughel the Elder and the Younger, Peter Paul Rubens and Jan van Eyck. The Ghent Altarpiece by Van Eyck with its Adoration of the Mystic Lamb towers above even the most amazing paintings of its time. Van Eyck is also credited with introducing oil painting.

If old masters are old hat to you, Belgium is also home to the art of many cartoon masters. The Belgian Comic Strip Center, located in Brussels, tells the story of cartoonists in the country. Tin Tin, Astorix and Obelix, Lucky Luke and the Smurfs are all Belgian creations.

Food

Belgium has enough Michelin stars to create an edible galaxy. A country where so many cultures are represented is destined to have fantastic restaurants. Call it a European fusion cuisine where Dutch, French and German cooking collides and produces a food that is produced as Ghent-based chef Ruth van Waerebeek puts it, with “French finesse” but served in “German portions.”

Chocolates, waffles, “French” fries and 450 varieties of beer, not to mention steamed mussels and a host of other signature Belgian dishes make this one of Europe’s finest countries to eat.

We always think of Medieval Europe in the grimmest terms. Somehow Belgium managed to preserve what was best about the Middle Ages and continues to serve it up in gorgeous medieval towns on the table, at the bar, in the galleries and in the streets. Belgium may lack a Great Wall, a Statue of Liberty or an Eiffel Tower, but somehow it’s a country that’s so invested in what’s good in life, that it leaves the grand gestures to others.