Brussels comic art day: a Tintin and murals itinerary
Brussels: Brussels Spanish Language Walking Tour Through Comic Art
A day in the capital of the comic strip
Belgium gave the world Tintin, the Smurfs and Lucky Luke, and Brussels celebrates that heritage with 50+ giant murals, a superb museum, and a whole culture around the “ninth art.” This one-day itinerary is a joyful, largely-free comic crawl — perfect for fans, families, and anyone who loves the city’s playful side. For the background, see Belgian comics explained.
The Belgian comic strip — the bande dessinée — is not a niche interest here. Since Broussaille was painted on Rue du Bon Secours in 1991, the city has added mural after mural across its districts, turning entire building façades into pages from beloved albums. The tradition runs deep: Hergé was drawing Tintin in a Brussels newspaper by 1929; Peyo invented the Smurfs here in 1958; the ligne claire style — clean lines, flat colour, meticulous research — became a Belgian hallmark exported worldwide. This itinerary takes all of that seriously while keeping the day enjoyable, light on the wallet, and genuinely fun for children.
Morning — the mural hunt
09:30 — Start at the Tintin wall. By Manneken-Pis on Rue de l’Étuve: Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock on a fire escape — the icon (Tintin in Brussels).
The Tintin mural on Rue de l’Étuve is the natural starting point: it’s recognisable, well-positioned for photographs, and sits right next to Manneken-Pis, which gives non-comic-devotees something to see while you find Snowy. The mural, painted after the original Hergé designs, shows Tintin and Snowy on a fire escape while Haddock leans from a window below — a moment of motion and personality compressed onto a building wall. Note the precision of the ligne claire style even at this scale: the clean contour lines, the flat colour, the carefully controlled shading. That exactness is the whole Belgian comics project in miniature.
10:00 — Hunt the central murals. Loop through the lower town (Marché au Charbon, Saint-Géry) collecting Broussaille (the first mural, 1991), Le Chat, Ric Hochet, the Smurfs and more, map in hand (murals map). A comic murals tour or a Tintin & street-art walk adds the stories.
With the map in hand, the lower town becomes a game. The murals are clustered enough that you can walk between them — some are on main streets, some down narrow lanes, some high on gable ends requiring a craned neck — and each is painted with the full craft of a professional comics artist working at enormous scale. Broussaille by Frank Pé on Rue du Bon Secours shows a young man and his cat in a soft, lyrical style that dates the mural immediately to the early 1990s. Le Chat by Philippe Geluck — the impassive, philosophical cat — is somewhere nearby, typically on a corner that makes it look like the character is addressing passers-by. The Smurfs mural brings Peyo’s blue figures into a full wall composition. The joy of the hunt is partly the murals themselves and partly the way they take you through the city’s back streets and junction walls; you see neighbourhoods you’d otherwise walk past.
A guided tour or a Tintin-specific walk adds the stories behind each mural — the circumstances of commissioning, the artists’ decisions, the characters’ histories — that the walls themselves can’t tell you. With children, the hunt becomes self-organising: who can spot the character first.
It’s free, outdoors, and a brilliant game for kids (family things to do).
Midday — the Comics Art Museum
12:00 — Lunch near Rue des Sables.
Several cafés and brasseries sit within easy walking distance of the Comics Art Museum on Rue des Sables — find one that suits and take a proper lunch break before the museum. The afternoon is spent indoors; there’s no hurry.
13:00 — Comics Art Museum (Belgian Comic Strip Center). Original Tintin and Smurfs art, a rocket model, the history of the ligne claire style — all inside a stunning Victor Horta Art Nouveau building, so you get architecture too (guide). A museum ticket skips the queue. Allow ~1.5–2 hrs.
The Comics Art Museum on Rue des Sables is housed in Victor Horta’s 1906 Waucquez warehouse — a commercial building originally designed for wholesale fabric trade that became, by a fortunate convergence of events, the permanent home of Belgium’s comic heritage. The building itself is worth coming for: the great glazed central hall, the iron columns, the light falling through the roof onto the mezzanine galleries. It’s one of the few publicly accessible Horta interiors in the city.
The collection occupies three floors and ranges from Hergé’s original Tintin pencil sketches and inked pages to Peyo’s Smurf designs, Edgar P. Jacobs’ Blake and Mortimer compositions, and a broader survey of ligne claire and the major postwar Belgian comics schools. The rocket from Tintin’s moon mission is reproduced at full scale in the atrium, a set-piece that works on children and adults alike. The permanent collection runs chronologically and contextually enough to be genuinely educational without feeling like homework. Plan for at least ninety minutes; two hours is better if the collection is new to you.
Afternoon — shops & more murals
15:00 — The Tintin Shop & comic stores. Near the Grand-Place, browse figurines, prints and collector editions — the best comic souvenirs (Tintin guide).
From the museum, it’s a short walk to the Tintin Shop near the Grand-Place — the official retail destination for Hergé merchandise, from the pocket-sized statuettes to large-format reprints and limited-edition prints. For serious collectors, several independent comic book shops in the central lanes carry back issues, collector editions, and items from the broader Belgian comics catalogue. This is the moment to buy souvenirs with actual quality behind them: an original-line art print or a well-produced album in French bears no resemblance to the airport-lounge merchandise.
15:45 — More walls. Catch any murals you missed — Gaston Lagaffe near the museum, others toward Saint-Géry. Look for Tintin at Brussels-Midi station if you’re passing through.
Gaston Lagaffe — André Franquin’s perpetually accident-prone office worker — has a mural near the museum that, in its cheerful chaos, captures something essential about the character and about the city’s relationship to its comic heroes. The Saint-Géry quarter west of the Grand-Place has several more walls; the area rewards another loop if your legs hold. For train travellers departing via Brussels-Midi, there’s a Tintin mural inside the station concourse — worth finding if the evening calls for it.
16:30 — Treat stop. A waffle or chocolate to finish — the perfect comic-day reward (best waffles).
A Brussels waffle — crisp-edged, rectangular, lightly dusted with icing sugar — or a box of pralines from a chocolatier near the Grand-Place makes the right end to a day that has been, in its best moments, genuinely playful. Both are things Belgium does better than anywhere, and both cost less than you’d expect for the quality.
For serious fans: the Hergé Museum
If Tintin is a deep love, a separate half-day trip to the Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve (~30 km, by train) is the ultimate pilgrimage — though it’s outside Brussels, so weigh it against the city’s other day trips.
The Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, designed by Christian de Portzamparc, is dedicated entirely to Hergé’s life and work — the original artworks, the creative process, the evolution of Tintin across more than forty years of albums, and the wider range of Hergé’s design and commercial work. It’s a serious museum and among the best dedicated to a single artist in Belgium. The journey by train from Brussels takes around forty minutes, making it a feasible half-day if you’re in Brussels for more than one day and the collection matters to you.
Tips
- It’s mostly free — only the museum and souvenirs cost (budget itinerary).
- Great for kids — turn the murals into a “spot the character” game.
- Look up and around corners — some murals are high or down side streets.
- Combine with Art Nouveau — the museum’s Horta building bridges both (art nouveau day).
The takeaway
A comic-art day captures Brussels’ soul better than any monument — playful, free-spirited, and proud of the cartoonists it gave the world. Hunt the walls, dive into the museum’s Horta-housed collection, follow Tintin, and you’ll see why the city paints its heroes on its buildings. Start with the comic strip route and pair it with the Art Nouveau day for a full visual-culture weekend.
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