I visited Brussels in February, and I had had two tours of the Brussels Town Hall, located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site square. There are two types of tour available, and both are different although a couple of the same rooms are toured twice, but both tours feature different rooms. The Panaromic Tour allows visitors to view the square from the balcony from a large room, which can be booked for weddings and also allows visitors to climb stairs to view the square from the top. The tours are conducted in different languages. Tour of the Brussels City Hall is by guided tours only.
The town hall was built in the early 1400s and is gothic in style. Extra wings were added to the hall later. The city hall was actually located here until more moderns times when a new building was erected. I did the panaromic tour first, and we explored a couple rooms.
One of the rooms was the Wedding Room. Here we stood on the balcony.
I got some close-up photographs of the statues.
I admired the view of the square from the balcony.
Afterwards, we headed into the Gothic Room. There are photographs of the guilds on the wall.
From here, we started to climb stairs.
Until we reached the top where we admired the view over the square.
I booked the standard tour for later on in the evening, and this toured the rooms including th wedding room and gothic room again.
We had a look at the first main room - the States of Brabant Room. We were told the history of the hall and the governance of Brussels and historical aspects.
A lot of the rooms were filled with tapestries. Below is the Maxmillian Room.
We also went to a room filled with paintings of Brussels, but they are not recognisable as Brussels today. The paintings were commissioned by an artist before major works were carried out to demolish parts of the city and to bury the river and harbour under new streets of Brussels.
We toured more rooms with tapestries.
Overall, I found both tours enjoyable. Both tours were different, so I think it depends on if you are more interested in getting a nice view over the square with some history or you want to see more of the rooms and learn more history about the building, governance, and the use of the rooms.
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