Mont Des Arts Brussels: A Free Garden Above The Museums

The hill between the Royal Palace quarter and the central streets carries a garden that costs nothing to walk, framed by museums that cost money on most days and nothing on one afternoon a month. Brussels keeps its free and its paid attractions close together here, and the line between them is easy to cross by accident, in both directions.

The Mont des Arts garden keeps seasonal hours. The Old Masters Museum, the Magritte Museum, the Musical Instruments Museum and BELvue each have their own free-day rules. Several metro stations serve the hill. Free walking tours with meeting points within reach of the hill include walks that are free, pay what you want, reserved on GuruWalk or freetour.com. See Free Things To Do In Brussels for more.

What Is Mont Des Arts?

Mont des Arts is a free public garden on the hill between Brussels' royal quarter and its central streets, open daily under seasonal hours and costing nothing to enter. The museums that frame it, the Old Masters Museum, the Magritte Museum, the Musical Instruments Museum and BELvue, are ticketed on ordinary days and free only on the first Wednesday of the month from 13:00.

The garden is free public space with seasonal opening hours. From 1 November to 28 February the gates cover 07:00 to 19:00. Spring runs 06:00 to 21:00 from 1 March to 30 April, summer 06:00 to 22:00 from 1 May to 31 August, and autumn 07:00 to 20:00 from 1 September to 31 October.

"Mont des Arts" gets used loosely for the whole slope, but the garden is the free part, and each museum around it carries its own ticketing. A tower, terrace or interior never inherits the status of the ground it stands on: the free part is the floor, the paid parts are the walls.

The museums' free-day rule is also narrower than it first sounds. Under-18s are free every day at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts. The rule belongs to each operator; the exact conditions per museum sit in the table further down.

Is The Viewpoint Free?

Yes. The garden and its terraces are free public space, open to anyone inside the seasonal hours, and no ticket, tour or booking is needed to stand on them. The museums around the garden are a different matter: each is ticketed on ordinary days, and each opens free only on the first Wednesday of the month from 13:00, permanent collections only.

The free status covers the ground you stand on and nothing else. The garden's hours are the only condition attached to it, and they shift four times a year, so a winter visit and a summer visit run on different clocks.

It does not extend to the institutions on the hill's edges. The Old Masters Museum and the Magritte Museum, both part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, the Musical Instruments Museum and BELvue each sell tickets on ordinary days, and each joins a first-Wednesday free scheme with its own start time. The Royal Museums and the MIM open free from 13:00, BELvue from 14:00. The scheme is run by the museums themselves, listed by Brussels Museums, and it is not the same scheme as the first-Sunday rule that covers the City of Brussels museums, the Horta Museum and the Design Museum elsewhere in the city.

If you would rather have the hill and the streets around it explained aloud than read them off a map, free walking tours cover that ground, and every one of them is free, pay what you want, reserved on GuruWalk or freetour.com. Three of them meet at Grand-Place. The Chocolate Tasting Included walk is a freetour.com listing by Bravo Discovery, rated 8.3 out of 10 across 1,497 freetour.com reviews, running 2 hours 30 minutes in English, French and Spanish from Grand-Place City Hall. The Insider Storytellers walk, also on freetour.com by Ambassadors Tours, is rated 9.4 out of 10 across 583 freetour.com reviews and runs 2 hours in English. The PDF Guide Included walk is a GuruWalk listing by AdvenTours, rated 4.87 out of 5 across 5,498 GuruWalk reviews, running 2 hours 30 minutes in English and Spanish from Grand-Place.

Each of those walks is a listing run by an independent local guide.

What Is The Best Time For The View?

The best time is less about a magic hour and more about working within the garden's seasonal opening hours. From 1 November to 28 February it opens 07:00 to 19:00; from 1 March to 30 April, 06:00 to 21:00; from 1 May to 31 August, 06:00 to 22:00; and from 1 September to 31 October, 07:00 to 20:00.

Planning works around two clocks: the garden's seasonal hours and the museums' free afternoon. If the aim is a free museum visit, the first Wednesday of the month is the day that matters, because from 13:00 the Royal Museums of Fine Arts and the MIM open their permanent collections free, and BELvue follows from 14:00. The garden's hours are generous enough on any day of the year that the walk through it fits around a museum afternoon without effort.

The museums' free window starts at 13:00, or 14:00 at BELvue, and the garden opens at 06:00 or 07:00 depending on the season, so a free-day visit has a natural shape: the garden first, the museums from early afternoon.

If you would rather spend the afternoon with a guide telling the city's story than with a museum floor plan, the Historical Story Tour is a free, pay what you want walk by Legends Free Tours on GuruWalk, rated 4.56 out of 5 across 249 GuruWalk reviews. It runs 2 hours 30 minutes in English and French and meets at Grand-Place.

The walk is reserved on its own platform and has no separate required cost.

Which Museums Sit Around It?

Four ticketed museums sit around the Mont des Arts gardens: the Old Masters Museum and the Magritte Museum, both part of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts, the Musical Instruments Museum and BELvue. Each opens free on the first Wednesday of the month, the first three from 13:00 and BELvue from 14:00, permanent collections only. Under-18s enter the Royal Museums free every day.

The Royal Museums of Fine Arts hold the hill's biggest free-day draw. Their first-Wednesday rule covers the permanent collections of the Old Masters Museum and the Magritte Museum, with free tickets issued at the desk and no online booking for free entry, as set out on fine-arts-museum.be. Temporary exhibitions are excluded. Under-18s are free every day, not only on the free afternoon.

The Musical Instruments Museum, the MIM, runs the same first-Wednesday rule from 13:00, and the ordinary price is EUR 18 otherwise. Its operator page at mim.be carries the scheme. BELvue is free on the first Wednesday from 14:00 and also on the first Sunday of the month.

Two warnings travel with this table. First, the first-Wednesday scheme is not a citywide rule: the first Sunday of the month is a different scheme, run by different bodies, covering the City of Brussels museums, the Horta Museum and the Design Museum, and a museum is never moved from one scheme to the other.

The wider free-museum landscape, including the first-Sunday scheme and the museums that are always free, is covered in the guide to free museums in Brussels, and the question of which museums are free in Brussels has its own answer on the blog. Neither page changes the rules printed above.

A few practical points follow from these rules and are worth planning around.

The under-18 rule deserves a second look from families. Because under-18s enter the Royal Museums free every day, not only on the free afternoon, a family with children can visit the Old Masters Museum or the Magritte Museum on any day of the week and pay only for the adults. The first-Wednesday scheme then matters mainly for the adults in that group, and for everyone at the MIM and BELvue, where no everyday under-18 exemption is listed in the table above.

Finally, keep the two schemes straight. If a museum opens free on a first Sunday, that museum belongs to the first-Sunday scheme, run by different bodies, and it will not appear on the first-Wednesday list.

One planning consequence of the desk-only ticketing at the Royal Museums is that you cannot secure a free slot in advance, so arriving with some flexibility in your schedule is sensible, especially if the free afternoon falls in a busy travel period. Because the free tickets are issued at the desk rather than online, the scheme also suits travellers who decide on the day rather than those who plan every visit weeks ahead. If seeing a temporary exhibition at the Old Masters Museum or the Magritte Museum is the priority, plan and budget for that separately, since the free afternoon covers permanent collections only.

The staggered start times also shape a workable free-afternoon route. The Royal Museums and the MIM begin their free hours at 13:00, while BELvue starts an hour later at 14:00, so a visitor aiming to use the scheme at several museums in one afternoon has a natural order: start with the 13:00 museums, then move on to BELvue once its free hour begins.

For families combining visits, the everyday under-18 exemption at the Royal Museums means children can be factored into any day's itinerary at no cost, while the adults in the group may prefer to concentrate their Royal Museums visit on a first Wednesday.

How Far Is It From Grand-Place?

The nearest metro stations to Mont des Arts are Gare Centrale and Parc, which sit on the hill's two sides. The free walking tours meet at Grand-Place or at the Grand-Place City Hall. Each walk has its own meeting point. The hill and the square both sit in central Brussels, with the Bourse the nearest metro stop to the slope between them.

Gare Centrale serves the slope toward the central streets and Grand-Place; Parc serves the Royal Palace side. Whichever direction you arrive from, one of the two stations lands you on the hill without a transfer. The public transport network itself is not free.

Grand-Place is the meeting point of the free walking tours. The Grand-Place guide covers the square itself as a free attraction, open public space at any time, with a Town Hall interior that is a separate, ticketed tour. The square is free to walk.

The walks that meet there are worth naming individually, because each is a separate listing on its own platform. The Historical Story Tour by Legends Free Tours, described above, meets at Grand-Place and runs in English and French. The Original Tour, English Only is a freetour.com listing by SANDEMANs Tours, rated 9.3 out of 10 across 14,442 freetour.com reviews, running 2 hours in English and meeting at the Grand-Place City Hall tower.

The Original Tour's review count is its own listing's count, and its rating is on freetour.com's 10-point scale, never converted to a 5-point one. Both walks are free, pay what you want, and neither declares a separate required cost.

What Is Free Nearby?

The free things near Mont des Arts are the gardens themselves, Brussels Park, and the first-Wednesday free afternoons at the four museums. Brussels Park is free and accessible at all times except in strong winds. The museums' free day runs from 13:00, or 14:00 at BELvue.

Brussels Park sits on the Royal Palace side of the slope and is accessible at all times except in strong winds. The Mont des Arts gardens carry seasonal hours. Both are open public space, and both are free without condition beyond their hours.

Beyond the hill, the free side of Brussels keeps its own calendar, and the walks that meet at Grand-Place cover the central streets on foot. The Local Guide, Three Languages walk is a GuruWalk listing by Belgo Tours, rated 4.71 out of 5 across 7,061 GuruWalk reviews, running 2 hours 15 minutes in English, Spanish and Italian from Grand-Place. The Evening Dark Side Tour by Legends Free Tours, also on GuruWalk, is rated 4.68 out of 5 across 726 GuruWalk reviews and runs 2 hours in English and Spanish from Grand-Place. The Comedy Format, EU Quarter walk is a freetour.com listing by The EU Comedy Tour, rated 9.8 out of 10 across 59 freetour.com reviews, running 2 hours in English from the European Commission entrance in the European Quarter.

All fifteen free walking tours run on GuruWalk and freetour.com, every one free, pay what you want.

Common Questions About Mont Des Arts