Places greetdruyts Wants to Go

According to this bar, God gave an “11th commandment” to Antwerp: Thou shalt drink beer.

Abandoned since 1998, this train station has become an oasis for urban explorers.

A man throwing a giant severed hand towers over Antwerp’s main square.

Petting this mysterious iron monkey supposedly brings good luck.

The former home of a trailblazing surrealist is still filled with haunting dolls and grim paintings.

An early 20th-century sanatorium, long abandoned and now being reclaimed by nature.

A giant bug impaled on a 75-foot-tall needle.

A beer pipeline runs beneath Bruges.

The tiny Belgian town's ancient version of Mardi Gras involves eerie wax masks, sticks for warding off evil, and ostrich plume hats.

This collection of solar timekeepers includes the world's first digital sundial.

A collection of weird and wonderful art fills a former houseplant nursery.

Each time a baby is born in Ghent, these streetlights flash in silent celebration.

This statue dedicated to the story of a Flemish boy and his dog was relatively obscure in Belgium, but a cult sensation in Japan.

Head underground and take a tour of the city's working sewer system, and see the underground river Senne, which defined Brussels for centuries before being covered in the 19th century.

This whimsical statue dumps water on its head to symbolize knowledge flowing into his brain. Or maybe booze.

An open-air sewer system that was covered piece-by-piece over 300 years.

Nature is slowly overtaking this disused cemetery on the outskirts of Brussels.

A Cold War command center is hidden under an idyllic countryside.

This giant urban staircase was built to keep the city's brave fighting men from getting waylaid in the red light district.

The Belgian royal family's private depot now stands abandoned and forgotten alongside the tracks.

Descend into the tunnels to experience the life of a coal miner.

The patron of this extravagant Art Nouveau confection insisted that nothing less than a boat should project from its facade.

The highest point in Belgium is a staircase to nowhere.

The bronzed skull of a beheaded traitor was affixed to the city gate in the 17th century.