The best comic murals we found in Brussels
We didn’t plan to spend a whole morning on it. We just spotted the Tintin wall, then another mural round the corner, and before we knew it we’d turned a Brussels morning into a citywide treasure hunt. Here are the comic murals we loved most (the full route).
Tintin (Rue de l’Étuve)
The icon, right by Manneken-Pis: Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock descending a fire escape. The one everyone photographs, and rightly — it’s brilliantly done (Tintin in Brussels).
What strikes you about the Tintin mural, once you stop taking photos and actually look, is the craft. Hergé’s clean-line style — what he called the ligne claire — translates brilliantly to large-scale wall painting. The proportions are right, the colours true, and Haddock’s expression alone is worth the detour. It’s painted on a real fire escape, which gives it a playfulness the original artist would have appreciated. This is where most mural-hunters start, and where the hunt properly begins.
Broussaille (Rue du Marché au Charbon)
The very first mural of the route, from 1991 — a young couple strolling arm in arm. Quietly lovely, and a landmark in the city’s gay-friendly quarter.
Frank Pé’s Broussaille was the mural that started the whole project, which gives it a historical significance beyond its beauty. The illustration style is softer and more romantic than the Tintin bold lines — a loose, expressive approach that suits the subject. The location in the Rue du Marché au Charbon feels right too: a street long associated with Brussels’ LGBTQ+ community, the mural has become a kind of neighbourhood emblem.
Le Chat (Boulevard du Midi)
Philippe Geluck’s deadpan philosopher cat, enormous on a gable end. Made us laugh out loud.
If you don’t know Le Chat — or The Cat — he’s been appearing in Belgian newspapers since the 1980s, dispensing absurdist wisdom and backhanded philosophical commentary in the manner of a cartoon Socrates who has given up on humanity but finds it mildly interesting. The gable-end scale makes the joke land harder: that expression of mild contempt, enormous on a Brussels wall, is funnier than it has any right to be.
The Smurfs
A whole cheerful blue wall of Peyo’s tiny creatures — a hit with the kids we saw pointing at it.
Peyo — Pierre Culliford, a Brussels native — created the Smurfs in 1958, and the full-wall mural is a proper tribute to them: dozens of the tiny blue figures doing their various things, in a composition that rewards looking at properly rather than just photographing and moving on. The contrast with Geluck’s philosophical cat could not be sharper. Belgian comics contain multitudes.
Gaston Lagaffe
Near the Comics Art Museum, the lovably useless office boy mid-disaster. Perfect placement.
Gaston is a particular kind of Belgian comic hero — incompetent, good-natured, perpetually causing accidents through a combination of creativity and complete unreliability — and the mural catches him at a characteristically catastrophic moment. The placement near the Comics Art Museum is deliberate and appropriate: this is the museum’s neighbourhood, and Gaston, invented by André Franquin, is one of its most celebrated figures.
Why it’s the best thing we did
Here’s what surprised us: the mural hunt was our favourite activity of the trip, and it was completely free. It does three things at once — it’s a game, it’s a walking tour of the lower town, and it’s a window into what makes Brussels Brussels: a city playful enough to paint cartoon characters across its buildings (Belgian comics explained).
The walking-tour aspect is real and valuable. The mural route takes you through parts of the lower town that aren’t on the standard tourist path — down side streets, through quiet squares, into the working-class fabric of the old city. You see Brussels differently hunting murals than you do following a guide to the obvious sights. You also get a free introduction to Belgian comics culture, which is substantial: Belgium produces more comic books per capita than any country in the world, and the mural project is a way of claiming that culture for the city’s walls.
We used the free Comic Book Route map to plan a loop, but honestly half the fun was just stumbling on them. There are 50+ in total; we caught maybe a dozen in the central core in a morning (murals map).
The broader context: why Brussels does this
It’s worth understanding why Brussels has this mural tradition rather than taking it for granted. Belgium produces more comic books per capita than any other country in the world — the figure often cited is around eight million books published annually for a population of eleven million people. Comics here are genuinely considered a fine art form — the neuvième art, the ninth art — and Hergé, Franquin, Peyo, Geluck and the others are treated with the same cultural seriousness that France gives its novelists. The Comics Art Museum (in a Victor Horta building on Rue des Sables) is not a novelty attraction; it’s a serious institution.
The mural project was conceived in the early 1990s as a way of claiming this cultural identity for the city’s streets — bringing the art form out of the printed page and onto the buildings. It’s a genuinely democratic public art project in the sense that you don’t need a ticket or a cultural reference to enjoy it: a small child pointing at Tintin on a fire escape is having the same encounter with the artwork as an adult who knows the complete Hergé bibliography. That quality — accessible, specific, free, funny — is what makes the mural hunt feel distinctively Brussels.
Tips from our hunt
- Look up and round corners — some are high on gable ends or down side streets.
- Start at the Tintin wall by Manneken-Pis and loop the lower town.
- Pair it with the Comics Art Museum in its gorgeous Horta building (guide).
- Great with kids — turn it into “spot the next character.”
- Take the map — the official route is well-organised and the map is free from tourist offices and online.
If you do one free thing in Brussels, make it this. It captures the city’s soul better than any monument — and you’ll come home with a camera roll full of cartoons and a daft grin.
