How Many Comic Murals Are In Brussels?

Brussels has a self-guided street route of comic-strip murals, an official interactive map, and a Tintin mural on Rue de l'Etuve. The city has no official number of murals.

How Many Comic Murals Are In Brussels? The Short Answer

Brussels has a free self-guided street route of comic-strip murals. The route is free of charge and is followed on foot. An official interactive map for the route is available on parcoursbd.brussels. The Tintin mural stands on Rue de l'Etuve.

The trail is a free, self-guided street route of comic-strip murals, with an official interactive map at parcoursbd.brussels. That map shows the murals that the route's organisers place on it, and it is the tool to use to walk the route.

The trail belongs to a wider comic-strip culture that runs through the city's museums, its shops and its street corners. The dedicated guide, Brussels comic strip walls explored, covers the trail in depth, and the paid side of the subject, the Belgian Comic Strip Center, charges EUR 12 for an adult ticket. The free side is the street itself. Walls cost nothing to look at, and the route that links them costs nothing to walk.

There is a practical reason the count keeps shifting: murals are street art on buildings, and buildings change. The trail is walked, not counted. A visitor who follows the map sees what the route currently holds, whatever the total turns out to be.

If you would rather have a guide than a map, the free walking tours, 15 in total across GuruWalk and freetour.com, are all free and pay what you want, reserved on their own platforms. Three of the English-capable options are carded below.

What Is Free And What Needs A Ticket?

The comic art route itself is entirely free: every painted wall, including the Tintin mural on Rue de l'Etuve, can be viewed at no cost on a self-guided walk supported by the official interactive map at parcoursbd.brussels, with no ticket, booking, or fee required. The only paid attraction on the subject is the Belgian Comic Strip Center, which charges EUR 12 for an adult ticket.

Brussels keeps its comic-strip heritage in two places. One is outdoors, painted onto buildings, linked by a route you walk yourself with the official map, and free: no desk, no queue, no ticket, no opening time that applies to a wall. The other is indoors, in the Belgian Comic Strip Center, where the collection is curated, roofed and ticketed. The center's adult price is EUR 12, and its operator page at comicstrip.be carries its visiting details.

The table is short because the facts are short. The Comic Strip Center is a paid museum. The street route costs nothing: it exists, it is mapped, and it is walked on the city's own streets. The distinction matters most for budget planning, because a family can walk the mural route for nothing and then decide, with the EUR 12 figure in hand, whether the indoor collection is worth adding.

For travellers who want the city's story told rather than mapped, the Historical Story Tour by Legends Free Tours is worth a look before the day is planned. It runs on GuruWalk, is rated 4.56 out of 5 across 249 GuruWalk reviews, lasts 2 hours 30 minutes, runs in English and French, and meets at Grand-Place. It is free and pay what you want, reserved on its own platform. More detail on that walk sits in the free walking tours guide.

When Is It Open Or Free?

The mural route is outdoors, so no opening hours apply to it: street walls are visible whenever the street is, and the route is free to walk at any time. The Belgian Comic Strip Center keeps its own hours on its operator page. The trail has no season, no ticket window and no closing day.

The mural route is a street route. A painted wall does not keep hours. The official interactive map is on parcoursbd.brussels, which is the practical tool for planning a walk: it shows the murals the route's organisers place on it, and it can be checked from a phone on the day.

The indoor side is different. The Belgian Comic Strip Center is a museum, and museums keep hours. Its operator page carries its own visiting information, and that page is the place to check before travelling. The adult ticket is EUR 12.

For a free itinerary, timing is mostly about daylight and comfort rather than opening hours. The mural route can be walked whenever the streets are walkable, and the city's other free sights split the same way: open spaces such as Grand-Place are free to walk at any time, while the free days at the major museums run on two separate monthly schemes, the first Wednesday from 13:00 at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, the MIM, the Art and History Museum and the Army Museum, and the first Sunday at the City of Brussels museums, the Horta Museum and the Design Museum. Those two schemes are run by different bodies and never merge into one rule, and the details are laid out in what museums are free in Brussels.

Winter Wonders, the free-to-enter Christmas market running 27 November 2026 to 3 January 2027, fills the city centre in the same season that daylight is shortest. A mural walk in December pairs naturally with the market, since both are outdoors and both cost nothing to enter, though the market's rides, food and drink are paid. The mural route has no dates, no closure and no season, which is why it suits a winter visit as easily as a summer one.

Because the route never closes, the only real scheduling decisions are yours to make. If you want to pair the murals with the free museum days, the calendar does the sorting for you: the first Wednesday afternoon covers the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, the MIM, the Art and History Museum and the Army Museum from 13:00, while the first Sunday covers the City of Brussels museums, the Horta Museum and the Design Museum. A first Wednesday that falls in December or early January can combine an afternoon indoors with a mural walk before or after, and the same works on a first Sunday. On every other day of the month, the two indoor schemes offer nothing, but the mural route, Grand-Place and the other open spaces still cost nothing and keep no hours at all.

If you are relying on the free-entry days rather than paying the Belgian Comic Strip Center's EUR 12 adult ticket, note the difference in kind between the two halves of the trip. The museum's hours are set by its operator and can be checked on its page before travelling; the murals answer to no schedule, so a late evening or an early morning walk loses you nothing except daylight. In the Winter Wonders season that matters: the market runs daily 12:00 to 22:00, with earlier 18:00 closings on 24 and 31 December and on 3 January, so an afternoon that starts with murals in whatever daylight is available can end at the market from midday onwards, and the market's entry, like the murals, is free.

One more timing note for planners working around the biennial events: the Flower Carpet runs in even years only, and the 2026 edition has already run, with the next in 2028. Anyone building a mural-and-market itinerary around the odd-numbered winters in between, including the 2026 to 2027 Winter Wonders dates, will find the murals and the market unchanged, since neither has a season, a closure or a ticket window. The Parlamentarium and the House of European History sit outside all of this scheduling pressure, as both are free every day, seven days a week, which makes them the easiest indoor pair to slot around a mural walk on any date at all.

What Is The Best Free Alternative Nearby?

The strongest free alternatives are the open spaces: Grand-Place, free to walk at any time; Manneken Pis, a free statue on a street corner on Rue de l'Etuve; the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert, a free covered public arcade; and the Mont des Arts gardens, a free public garden with printed seasonal hours. All of them cost nothing, and none of them needs a ticket.

If the mural route has delivered the comic-strip half of the day and the EUR 12 museum ticket does not appeal, the free side of central Brussels is generous. Grand-Place is an open public space, free to walk at any time, though the Town Hall interior is a ticketed tour and a different thing entirely. Manneken Pis is a free statue on a street corner, on Rue de l'Etuve, the same street as the Tintin mural. The Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert are a covered public arcade, free to walk, with the shops inside keeping their own hours.

The Mont des Arts gardens add a green option: a free public garden with seasonal hours, 07:00 to 19:00 from 1 November to 28 February, and earlier opening across the warmer months. Around the gardens, the museums are ticketed, and the same rule holds everywhere on Free Things To Do In Brussels: a park, square or church never transfers its free status to the building inside it. The Cinquantenaire park is free, for instance, while the Art and History Museum and the Military Museum inside it are ticketed, free only on the first Wednesday of the month from 13:00.

The Atomium is another Brussels landmark that travellers often assume is free. The Atomium itself and Mini-Europe are ticketed, while the plaza and the view of the structure from outside are free to be in. The mural route has no interior to buy. What you see from the street is the whole of it, and the street is public. That makes the trail one of the most reliable free activities in the city, immune to ticket prices, opening windows and seasonal closures.

For planning a whole free day, the method is to stack the open spaces, which ask nothing of your wallet and nothing of your calendar, and to treat the ticketed sights as conscious choices. The full free sightseeing picture, including the cathedral, which is free to enter while its Treasury, crypt and towers are paid, is laid out in is Grand Place free and the budget guide.

Which Free Walking Tour Passes This Spot?

Free walking tours in Brussels list meeting points rather than routes. Walks meeting at Grand-Place and at the Grand-Place City Hall are the closest anchor to the Tintin mural on Rue de l'Etuve. The Tintin mural is on Rue de l'Etuve in central Brussels.

The Historical Story Tour by Legends Free Tours belongs in the same frame. It runs on GuruWalk, is rated 4.56 out of 5 across 249 GuruWalk reviews, lasts 2 hours 30 minutes, runs in English and French, and meets at Grand-Place. It is free and pay what you want, reserved on its GuruWalk listing, and its full profile is on the Historical Story Tour page.

For evening walkers, the Dark Side tour by Legends Free Tours runs on GuruWalk, rated 4.68 out of 5 across 726 GuruWalk reviews, 2 hours, in English and Spanish, meeting at Grand-Place. The PDF Guide Included walk by AdvenTours runs on GuruWalk too, rated 4.87 out of 5 across 5,498 GuruWalk reviews, lasting 2 hours 30 minutes in English and Spanish from Grand-Place. Every one of these walks is free, pay what you want, and each is reserved on its own platform.

Common Questions About This Topic

How Many Comic Murals Are In Brussels?

Brussels has a free self-guided street route of comic-strip murals with an official interactive map on parcoursbd.brussels, and the Tintin mural on Rue de l'Etuve.

Is The Comic Mural Route Free To Walk?

Yes. The route is a free, self-guided street walk with an official interactive map on parcoursbd.brussels. No ticket, booking or fee attaches to it, and no opening hours apply to street walls.

Is The Belgian Comic Strip Center Free?

No. The Belgian Comic Strip Center is ticketed, at EUR 12 for an adult. Its operator page carries its own visiting details.

Where Is The Tintin Mural In Brussels?

The Tintin mural is on Rue de l'Etuve. It is a street wall and free to see.

Can A Free Walking Tour Show Me The Murals?

Free walking tours in Brussels do not follow a set mural route. Several walks meet at Grand-Place and the Grand-Place City Hall.

Do The Free Walking Tours In Brussels Cost Anything?

Every walk is free, pay what you want, reserved on its own platform, GuruWalk or freetour.com. No walk requires a separate cost or deposit.