Brussels comic strip route: a free mural treasure hunt
Brussels: Brussels Spanish Language Walking Tour Through Comic Art
What is the Brussels comic strip route?
It's a free, self-guided city trail linking more than 50 giant murals of Belgian comic characters — Tintin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Gaston — painted on building walls across central Brussels. You can wander it yourself with a map, hunting the frescoes as you sightsee, or take a guided comic walk for the stories behind them.
Brussels’ best free attraction is painted on its walls
Belgium is the spiritual home of the European comic strip — Tintin, the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Gaston Lagaffe and dozens more were born here — and Brussels celebrates that heritage in the most charming way imaginable: by painting giant murals of beloved characters across the sides of its buildings. There are more than 50, and finding them is a free, joyful, self-guided treasure hunt that doubles as a walking tour of the city. It’s perfect for families, fun for everyone, and one of the most Brussels things you can do. For the background, see Belgian comics explained.
How the route works
Begun in 1991, the official Comic Book Route (Parcours BD) has grown to over 50 frescoes, with new ones still added. They’re scattered mostly across the central districts, with more in outer neighbourhoods. You don’t follow a fixed path — you collect them as you wander, using a map to plan a loop. It’s free, outdoors, and as long or short as you like.
Grab the route map (downloadable from the city tourism site, or printed at the tourist office), and turn your sightseeing into a hunt.
Star murals to find (central)
- Tintin (Rue de l’Étuve, near Manneken-Pis) — Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock descending a fire escape. The most famous wall.
- Broussaille (Rue du Marché au Charbon) — the very first mural of the route (1991), an affectionate couple strolling.
- Le Chat (Boulevard du Midi) — Philippe Geluck’s deadpan cat.
- Gaston Lagaffe, Lucky Luke, Boule et Bill, Olivier Rameau — dotted through the centre.
- The Smurfs (Les Schtroumpfs) — a cheerful blue wall celebrating Peyo’s tiny creatures.
A full mapped list is in our best comic murals map guide.
The murals as art, not just decoration
It would be easy to dismiss these as tourist attractions painted to fill a niche. They’re more interesting than that. The Parcours BD was conceived as an act of civic pride in a city that genuinely produced world-famous graphic art — Belgium’s bande dessinée tradition is a serious artistic lineage that runs from Hergé (Tintin, 1929) through to contemporary artists. The murals are full-size reproductions of original artwork, many painted by the artists themselves or with their direct involvement. When you stand in front of the Tintin wall on Rue de l’Étuve, you’re looking at Hergé’s line work reproduced at building scale — the same clean, precise style (la ligne claire) that influenced generations of graphic novelists.
The route also takes you through parts of Brussels that tourists don’t otherwise visit — back streets in the lower city, residential blocks in Saint-Gilles, corners of Ixelles — giving you a genuinely different perspective on the city than the usual monument circuit.
Make a half-day of it
The central murals link naturally with the main sights, so you can weave the hunt into a normal day’s sightseeing:
- Start near the Grand-Place / Manneken-Pis (the Tintin wall is right there).
- Loop through the lower town (Marché au Charbon, Saint-Géry) collecting walls.
- Visit the Comics Art Museum — set in a free-to-marvel-at Horta building (guide).
- Finish with a coffee, having “caught” a dozen frescoes.
With children
The comic strip route is one of the best children’s activities in Brussels — the combination of character recognition, the treasure-hunt format, and the fact that it’s outdoors and free makes it reliably engaging. Children who know Tintin or the Smurfs will be particularly excited, but even the unfamiliar murals are visually striking enough to hold attention. The route can be adjusted to any energy level: a focused two-hour hunt of the central walls, or a full half-day spreading into outer streets, depending on age and enthusiasm.
The Comics Art Museum is a natural companion stop — original Tintin panels, Smurf figurines, and the extraordinary Horta building housing it all. It’s worth the entrance fee for the building alone. See Comics Art Museum guide.
Self-guided or guided?
Self-guided is free and great — with a map, kids especially love spotting the next wall. A guided comic tour adds the stories: who drew them, the in-jokes, the history of Belgian bande dessinée. A comic murals walking tour covers the best walls with context, and a Tintin and street-art walk focuses on Hergé’s world. Combine either with the Comics Art Museum.
The broader Belgian comic tradition
The murals are the street-level expression of a much deeper cultural legacy. Belgium produced several of the most globally distributed comic works of the 20th century, and the tradition runs from Hergé (Georges Remi, 1907–1983) — who created Tintin in 1929 as a newspaper strip and developed it into 24 albums translated into over 70 languages — through Peyo (the Smurfs), René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (Asterix; Goscinny was Belgian-born), Morris (Lucky Luke), and André Franquin (Gaston Lagaffe, Spirou) to contemporary artists.
The city is proud of this lineage in a way that’s hard to overstate. The Comics Art Museum dedicates its permanent collection to it; the Bandes dessinées (comic books) section of any Brussels bookshop is unusually substantial; the murals themselves are maintained as official civic infrastructure. Belgium is not a country that treats its popular culture as a lesser form — the same seriousness applied to Magritte at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts is applied to Hergé in the dedicated Tintin exhibition spaces.
Understanding this helps you see the murals differently. They’re not graffiti or marketing — they’re a city expressing genuine pride in an art form it helped invent.
Why it’s worth it
It’s free, it’s outdoors, it’s brilliant with children, and it turns a walk through Brussels into a game. More than that, it captures the city’s playful soul better than any monument — a capital that decorates itself with cartoon characters isn’t taking itself too seriously, and that’s exactly why people grow to love it. Deepen it with Tintin in Brussels and the Comic Art Museum.
Frequently asked questions — Brussels comic strip route: a free mural treasure hunt
How many comic murals are there in Brussels?
Over 50 large comic-strip murals across the city, part of an official 'Comic Book Route' begun in 1991, with new ones still being added. Most central ones can be seen on a self-guided walk; the full set spreads into outer neighbourhoods.Is the Brussels comic mural route free?
Yes — the murals are on public walls and free to find and photograph. You only pay if you visit the Comics Art Museum or join a guided comic-strip tour. A free downloadable or printed map makes the self-guided hunt easy.
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