BelgiumBelgië / Belgique / Belgien

Caesar called the Belgae the bravest of the Gauls, but for most of the next 2,000 years the territory was a prize rather than a power. In the Middle Ages the County of Flanders grew rich on weaving English wool, and Bruges, Ghent and Ypres were among the largest cities north of the Alps. Their belfries and cloth halls — symbols of civic freedom from counts and kings — still dominate their squares.

In the 15th century the dukes of Burgundy gathered these provinces into the Burgundian Netherlands, and their court in Brussels and Bruges patronised painters, tapestry weavers and musicians. By inheritance the lands passed to the Habsburgs and to Spain. When the northern provinces revolted in the 16th century, the southern ones were reconquered and stayed Catholic; Antwerp's fall in 1585 sent its merchants north to Amsterdam, and the border between the Netherlands and Belgium traces that split.

Spanish, then Austrian, then French rule followed, and after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815 the great powers joined the south to the Dutch kingdom. Catholic, largely French-speaking elites resented Dutch rule, and in 1830 a riot after an opera performance in Brussels became a revolution. Belgium became independent with a German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, as its first king in 1831.

The new state industrialised fast — coal and steel in Wallonia, textiles in Ghent, the port of Antwerp — and became the second industrial country in the world after Britain. King Leopold II made the Congo his private possession from 1885 to 1908, with forced labour and violence that killed millions; the Belgian state took it over in 1908 and ruled until 1960. Two German invasions, in 1914 and 1940, made Belgian soil a battlefield again.

Belgium was founded as a French-speaking state even though most of its people spoke Dutch dialects. French was the language of government, courts, the army and higher education well into the 20th century. The Flemish movement fought for equal rights, and laws from the 1930s gradually made Dutch official in Flanders; the University of Ghent switched to Dutch in 1930.

In 1962–63 a language border was fixed by law. North of it, Flanders is officially Dutch-speaking; south of it, Wallonia is French-speaking, with a small German-speaking area in the east, handed over from Germany after the First World War. Brussels, a mostly French-speaking city surrounded by Flanders, is officially bilingual.

Between 1970 and 1993 successive reforms turned Belgium into a federation of three regions (Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels) and three language communities (Flemish, French, German-speaking), each with its own parliament and government. Many parties exist only on one side of the language line, so federal coalitions are hard to build: after the 2010 election Belgium went 541 days without a government.

For visitors, this means bilingual or monolingual signs depending on where you are, station names that change on departure boards, and sensitivity about language: use English rather than French in Flanders if you do not speak Dutch. It also means a cultural difference — Flanders richer and more right-leaning since the 1960s, Wallonia post-industrial and more left-leaning — that shows up in every election.

Oil painting was perfected in 15th-century Flanders. Jan van Eyck and his brother Hubert's Ghent Altarpiece (completed 1432), in St Bavo's Cathedral, is one of the founding works of European art; its panels have been stolen, hidden and fought over, and one still missing panel was replaced by a copy. Hans Memling in Bruges, Rogier van der Weyden in Brussels and Hieronymus Bosch's followers made the 'Flemish Primitives' the most sought-after painters of their age.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted peasant life and landscapes in 16th-century Brussels; Peter Paul Rubens dominated 17th-century Antwerp with vast Baroque canvases for churches and palaces, and trained Anthony van Dyck. Antwerp's cathedral still holds four Rubens altarpieces.

Around 1893 Victor Horta built the Hôtel Tassel in Brussels, launching Art Nouveau architecture: iron, glass and whiplash curves. Four Horta houses are UNESCO sites. In the 20th century René Magritte made Brussels the home of Surrealism, and Hergé's Tintin (1929) made it the capital of the comic strip — the '9th art' — which is why comic murals cover walls across the city.

Belgium has more than 400 breweries and a beer culture that UNESCO listed as intangible heritage in 2016. Monks brewed for centuries; today several Trappist abbeys still brew inside their walls, and their beers carry a protected label. Lambic, fermented by wild yeasts in the air of the Senne valley around Brussels, is blended into gueuze or aged with cherries into kriek. Every beer has its own glass, and serving it right is a point of pride.

Belgian chocolate took off in the 19th century with cocoa from the Congo; the praline — a filled chocolate — was invented in Brussels by Jean Neuhaus in 1912. Belgian chocolate is defined by using real cocoa butter, and the country has thousands of chocolatiers, from global brands to single-shop workshops.

Belgians claim to have invented fries, and the friterie (fritkot) is a national institution: potatoes double-fried in beef fat, served in a paper cone with mayonnaise or a dozen other sauces. Traditional cooking is hearty — beef stewed in beer, creamy waterzooi, mussels by the kilo — with French technique behind it, which is why Belgium has one of Europe's highest numbers of Michelin-starred restaurants per head.

Belgium was neutral in 1914, guaranteed by the great powers; Germany's invasion on 4 August to reach France brought Britain into the war. The army held a strip behind the flooded Yser river for four years, and around Ypres British, Commonwealth, French and German armies fought some of the war's worst battles, including the first large-scale gas attack in 1915 and Passchendaele in 1917. Hundreds of thousands died in a few square kilometres.

The landscape of Flanders Fields is still marked by it: more than 150 military cemeteries, the Menin Gate in Ypres with 54,000 names of the missing, and farmers who still turn up unexploded shells — the 'iron harvest' — every spring. Every evening since 1928 (except during the Second World War occupation) the Last Post has sounded under the Menin Gate.

In May 1940 Germany invaded again. King Leopold III surrendered and stayed, while the government went to London; his conduct split the country after the war and led to his abdication in 1951. The Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes in winter 1944–45, centred on Bastogne, was Germany's last major offensive in the west.

Brussels is the de facto capital of the European Union: the Commission, the Council and one seat of the European Parliament are here, along with NATO's headquarters and thousands of lobbyists, diplomats and journalists. About a third of Brussels residents are foreign nationals, which makes it one of the most international cities in the world.

The federal government after the 2024 elections was formed in 2025 under Bart De Wever of the Flemish nationalist N-VA — check — with a programme of budget cuts that triggered repeated national strikes. For visitors this is the most practical political fact: union action days can stop trains, trams and flights.

Belgium has begun to confront its colonial past. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren reopened in 2018 as the AfricaMuseum with a critical approach; statues of Leopold II have been removed or defaced; in 2020 King Philippe expressed 'deepest regrets' to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in 2022 he returned a Congolese mask and visited Kinshasa.