2 Best Sights in Brussels, Belgium

The original Flemish-Renaissance library was set up in the old Cloth Hall on Naamsestraat in 1636. But after the university was disbanded during the French Revolutionary Wars, its collection was ushered away to Paris. Though destroyed in 1940 by British-German artillery fire, postwar it was rebuilt to the same design and today, visitors can climb the 300 steps to the top of the tower where a carillon of 63 bells, weighing 35 tons, rings out across the square. 

Built in 1381, this gate is a unique remnant of Brussels’s city walls, which tend to reappear in unusual places. (For example, if you continue down nearby rue Haute, you'll spy a huge chunk of wall next to the bowling alley at the crossroads with boulevard de l'Empereur.) In 1847, this gate became one of the first museums in Europe, though it lost its collections to the Cinquantenaire complex in the 1870s. It now has a permanent exhibition on medieval Brussels, and if you climb its 169 steps to the roof, a crenelated walkway affords sweeping views of the neighborhood.