Brussels · Self-guided audio walk

Brussels in Comics

Brussels put comics on its walls. More than fifty of them since 1991, when the city peeled off its advertising hoardings and painted over the damage. One loop from Horta's comic museum to the Gauls of Rue de la Buanderie.

8Stops
2.7 kmDistance
45+ minTime

Photo by Ferran Cornellà on Wikimedia Commons

Brussels is the capital of the ninth art, and since 1991 it has proved the point on its walls. More than fifty comic strip murals are spread through the lower town, most of them inside the Pentagon, free to see at any hour.

This walk starts in the Belgian Comic Strip Center, in the former Waucquez drapery stores that Victor Horta completed in 1906, then heads out through the west side of the lower town. You pass the Snuls curl on Rue du Marché aux Poulets, Marc Sleen's Néron on Place Saint-Géry, and Broussaille in the Plattesteen, the first mural the city put up.

It ends at Manneken-Pis, a bronze from 1619 barely 55 centimetres tall with more than a thousand costumes to its name, and at the Gauls of Rue de la Buanderie. The walls cost nothing, and children keep up.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Must see

Photo by User:Ben2 on Wikimedia Commons

Belgian Comic Strip Center

0:00

A comic museum inside Victor Horta's 1906 drapery warehouse.

Start inside the ninth art, in a building that was never meant for it. These were the Waucquez drapery stores, and Victor Horta, the architect who gave Brussels its Art Nouveau, completed them in 1906. Fabric was measured and cut on these floors; now the Belgian Comic Strip Center keeps the country's comic strip collections here. It opens Tuesday to Sunday, from ten in the morning to six in the evening, and on Mondays only in July and August. Comics count as the ninth art in this country, which is how the national collection ends up inside a Horta landmark.

Step back out onto Rue des Sables and look up. Brussels has more than fifty comic strip murals on its walls, most of them inside this pentagon of old streets. This walk takes the west side of the lower town, from the first wall the city put up to the Gauls of Rue de la Buanderie. The walls are free, children keep up without trouble, and the museum is the only stop that asks for a ticket.

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≈9 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by Ferran Cornellà on Wikimedia Commons

Gaston Lagaffe mural

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Franquin's office boy on a narrow street near Rue Neuve.

Gaston Lagaffe is André Franquin's character, and this wall has carried him since February 2007, about 39 square metres of him, on a street the signposts name twice: Rue de l'Écuyer in French, Schildknaapsstraat in Dutch. He has a second monument in the city. A statue of him stood near the museum you just left from 1996 until the city removed it in 2018, so for now this painted wall is the only place on the walk where you meet him.

Look at how this kind of paint holds a wall. Almost every mural on the route comes from the same workshop, Art Mural, and mostly from two painters, G. Oreopoulos and D. Vandegeerde, who have spent decades brushing comic characters onto brick and plaster, up above the shopfronts.

The city has decided that this is what a blank gable is for. Gaston stands in it, doing nothing at all, and that is the joke.

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≈3 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by François Genon on Unsplash

Crolle des Snuls

0:00

A black curl on a red wall, the Snuls logo from 1989.

This one is not a comic strip character at all. It is a curl, drawn in 1989 by Frédéric Jannin, a Brussels cartoonist, musician and comedian, as the logo of Les Snuls, the comedy collective that had its own show on Canal+ in the 1990s. Look at the shape: it sits between a spiral, a question mark and an onomatopoeia. The city painted it here in February 2024, a black curl in relief on a red wall at number 41 on the poultry market street.

It was the first of eight new walls the city planned that year, and the only one on this walk that belongs to the street art route, a younger cousin of the comic strip route. The same curl, built in three dimensions, stands inside Brucity, the administrative centre a few steps from here.

A doodle by a Brussels comedian, made in 1989 and still going up on walls and inside lobbies thirty-five years later.

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≈5 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 8 continue in the app

Néron mural

Marc Sleen's character on Place Saint-Géry, up since 1995.

in app

Broussaille mural

The very first mural of the route, at the Plattesteen corner.

in app

Manneken-Pis

A 1619 bronze with a thousand costumes, and Tintin 40 metres away.

in app

Monsieur Jean mural

Dupuy and Berberian's quiet hero, with Kinky and Cosy close by.

in app

Astérix et Obélix mural

Uderzo's Gauls, and Lucky Luke on the same street.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

Do the comic strip murals cost anything?

The comic strip murals are free to look at, at any hour. More than fifty have been painted since 1991, most of them inside the Pentagon, and they're meant to be read from the pavement.

Which characters will I pass?

Franquin's Gaston Lagaffe, the Snuls curl on its red wall, Marc Sleen's Néron on Place Saint-Géry, Broussaille, the first mural the city put up, Monsieur Jean, Manneken-Pis, and the Gauls of Uderzo with Lucky Luke on the same street.

Is the Belgian Comic Strip Center worth going inside?

The Belgian Comic Strip Center is the walk's one ticketed stop, inside Victor Horta's Waucquez drapery stores from 1906, and it makes a good rain plan. The murals themselves are all outdoors and free.

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Provenance · last verified September 27, 2026

Built from the Wayside route itself: the stops, their order, and the walk between them.

Photo by Ferran Cornellà on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by User:Ben2 on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by Ferran Cornellà on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by François Genon on Unsplash

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