Everything you need to know about Belgium
Explore Belgium from the North Sea and Flemish cities to Brussels, the Meuse valley and the Ardennes. Learn its provinces, cities and waters, find sixteen sights, and discover its history, food and everyday life. Practise Dutch, French or German, the country’s three official languages; these lessons introduce standard forms, with Belgian usage explained in the reading.
Read it, then make it stick
Geography of Belgium
Flat polders in the north, the wooded Ardennes in the south, and 67 kilometers of coast.
Know the shape of the country
Start with ten provinces and the separate Brussels-Capital Region, then place twenty cities and find the Scheldt, Meuse and North Sea. Flanders and Wallonia each have five provinces; Brussels belongs to neither. Zoom in for the small capital region. Boundaries, rivers and coastal context: Natural Earth, public domain. River lines retain a small border margin; the North Sea target is a coastal learning area, not a maritime boundary. City coordinates are curated.
Places worth visiting
Essential · Square & architecture
Grand-Place
Brussels’ central square brings together its Gothic town hall and ornate guildhalls. UNESCO recognises the square as an outstanding ensemble of civic and commercial architecture.
Find sixteen sights across Belgium, from Brussels’ Grand-Place and Atomium to Bruges, Ghent and the Meuse valley. Continue to the First World War memorials, abbey ruins, Ardennes castles and the High Fens. Essential is our shortlist for a first trip, and worth a detour goes further. Select a pin to read about a place, then play the map and find them all.
Take Dutch with you
Greetings and politeness
Hello, please, thank you, sorry: the ten openers everything else builds on.
Keep going one country deeper
When you have had your fill of Belgium, the countries marked guide have a page like this one, and every other has maps of its own.
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