Luxury Vacations in Belgium

Belgium is a Renaissance oil painting of a country, an offbeat Leonard Cohen lyric of a destination. Here are crow-stepped gable houses and canals, cobblestones and medieval spires, but also vibrant modern brushstrokes and cutting-edge fashion.

Old masters and young chocolatiers, diamonds and moules-frites, the original craft ale scene. As a cookery writer once remarked, everyone here eats well – whether that’s waffles and Zeebrugge brown shrimp or one of the many Michelin-starred feasts. And Belgium wears its art history on its sleeve: visitors can join the dots between Ghent and Bruges, Rubens and Van Eyck. Bruges is the prettiest, criss-crossed with bridges that span centuries, with treasures in the Groeninge Museum and Michelangelo’s Madonna. Antwerp for the magnificent Grote Markt square and the KMSKA museum for golden-age Flemish art; Brussels for Magritte and Tintin. Elsewhere, there’s the Hamptons-like beach resort of Knokke-Heist, limestone caves of the Ardennes and Ypres, for its moving, evocative World War I Museum. One of Europe’s most atmospheric countries.