Magritte Museum

What it is

The Musée Magritte Museum is a museum devoted entirely to René Magritte (1898-1967), installed in the Hôtel Altenloh on the Place Royale and run by the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. It opened on 2 June 2009, the result of a plan to redistribute the Museums' modern collection into thematic buildings; the Musée Fin-de-Siècle Museum followed in 2013. The listed Hôtel Altenloh had been restored in 1984 and used for temporary exhibitions and nineteenth-century galleries before the conversion, which was paid for with the patronage of the French and Belgian arms of ENGIE and the backing of the Magritte Foundation and the Belgian Buildings Agency. The operator calls it the largest Magritte collection in the world and the international reference centre for his work. Its own pages give two different figures for what is on show: the museum page says 230 works and archives are displayed, while the visitor pages describe a collection of over 120 works. Both counts are the operator's own and it is worth knowing before arriving that the number is not fixed, because loans from Belgian and foreign museums and from private collectors change the selection. More than 300,000 people come each year. It is not the René Magritte Museum in Jette, which is the house the painter lived in between 1930 and 1954 and a separate visit.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The route is chronological and runs downwards: a lift takes visitors to the top floor and the museum is walked from level 3 to level 1, on stairs unless staff are asked to open the lift again. Level 3 covers 1898 to 1929 — the Constructivist beginnings, the 7 Arts circle, the encounter with de Chirico and the first Surrealist canvases — with themed showcases drawn from the Museums' Surrealist archive: historic magazines, tracts and letters involving E.L.T. Mesens, Paul Nougé, Camille Goemans and Louis Scutenaire in Brussels, and André Breton, Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon from the Paris years. Level 2 takes 1930 to 1950, the return to Brussels and the Depression, the advertising and commercial work Magritte called his 'idiotic works', his closer ties to the Belgian Communist Party, the wartime 'full sunlight' pictures painted in an Impressionist manner, and the deliberately crude 'vache' series shown in Paris after the Liberation — the museum holds the most important group of vache-period works anywhere. Level 1, titled The Enchanted Domain, is the last stretch: 1951 to 1967, the repetitions and the large images gathered around The Dominion of Light and The Domain of Arnheim, with private loans hung beside the Museums' own key paintings. Paintings are only part of it — gouaches, drawings, sculptures, painted objects, posters, musical scores, photographs and films are all displayed.

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How long to spend

Ninety minutes is the figure recorded on this page, and it is an inference rather than an operator recommendation: the Royal Museums publish no suggested length for a self-guided visit of the Magritte Museum, but their own English-language guided tour of it runs from 16:00 to 17:30, which is an hour and a half in the rooms with a guide setting the pace. Three floors walked downwards, the paintings and objects on show, and a great deal of archive material in showcases will absorb that comfortably and can absorb more; someone who reads the wall texts and the vitrines can spend well over two hours without hurrying. Add time before the rooms rather than after them. There are extra security checks at the entrance which the operator warns may cause delays, bags go into the cloakroom first, and admission is metered by hourly gauges, so an arrival can be held even with a ticket in hand. The audio guides for adults, teenagers and children each cover between twenty and thirty works and lengthen the visit accordingly. Anyone pairing this with the Old Masters Museum next door on a combined ticket should treat the two as a half day rather than an errand between other plans.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The museum opens Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 17:00 and at weekends from 11:00 to 18:00. Monday is the closed day, and the Museums also close on 1 January, 1 May, 1 and 11 November and 25 December. On 24 and 31 December they close at 15:00, and on 8 January they open at 11:00. The ticket offices shut earlier than the galleries — 16:30 on weekdays and 17:30 at weekends — so a late arrival without a ticket bought online has a harder deadline than the closing time suggests. Weekends give the longest day and the latest finish, weekdays the earlier start; the first hour after opening is the quietest part of either. The one date to plan around deliberately is the first Wednesday of each month, when admission to all the Museums is free from 13:00. That is the cheapest way in and predictably the busiest afternoon of the month, and it does not cover temporary exhibitions. Because the museum admits a limited number of visitors per hour through a gauge system, a busy afternoon means waiting rather than crowding, which is worth knowing if the day is tightly planned. Winter suits the building: the galleries are deliberately dim, so daylight outside makes little difference to what is seen inside.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

Admission to the Magritte Museum is €13 for an adult. It is €10 for visitors over 65 and for adults in a group of at least fifteen, and €5 for young people aged 18 to 25, for registered jobseekers and for integration-income beneficiaries. Everyone from 0 to 17 visiting outside a school group enters free, as do European Disability Card holders with an accompanying person, press with a valid card, school teachers, ICOM members, BELSPO staff, City of Brussels guides, and holders of the Friends of the RMFAB, Maecenas Circle, Brussels Card, Ribbedebie and Attractions et Tourisme cards. A combined ticket with the Old Masters Museum is €20, against €13 for either alone. Audio guides — for adults, for teenagers aged 12 to 18, for children aged 6 to 11, the audio-description tour of ten paintings, and the visio guides in sign language — are €5 each and are collected at the information desk in the main hall. A ticket is valid for one day only, the date printed on it. Admission is free for everyone on the first Wednesday of the month from 13:00, except to temporary exhibitions. The guided tour in English is a separate booking at €18, or €13 reduced, admission included.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

The museum is at Place Royale 2, at the top of the hill between the Old Masters Museum and the royal quarter, and no car is needed to reach it. Brussels Central station is the nearest railway station and about a five-minute walk. Metro lines 1 and 5 stop at Gare Centrale and at Parc, trams 92 and 93 stop at Royale directly outside, and buses 33, 38, 71 and 95 also serve the Royale stop, with 29, 63, 65 and 66 calling at Parc or Gare Centrale. For anyone who does drive, the operator names four public car parks nearby: Albertine on Rue des Sols and Place de la Justice, Parking Gare Centrale on Rue des Sols, Parking 2 Portes between Rue de Namur and Boulevard de Waterloo, and Parking Poelaert on Place Poelaert. Which door to use depends on the ticket. The entrance on Place Royale 2 is reserved for visitors who booked online; anyone without a ticket goes to the desk at the main entrance of the Royal Museums at Rue de la Régence 3, which is also the way into the Magritte Shop and the meeting point for guided tours. All galleries are accessible to visitors with reduced mobility, wheelchairs can be borrowed free on site, and guide dogs are welcome.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

Strollers and pushchairs of any kind are not allowed inside; frontal baby carriers are, which matters if the visit is being planned around a small child. Bags go to the cloakroom, which is free, and the operator asks that belongings be left there; staff may ask a bag to be opened and may refuse anything they judge a risk. Suitcases are accepted only if smaller than 55 by 50 by 35 centimetres — larger ones can be left at Brussels Central station, five minutes away. Extra security checks at the entrance can cause delays, so the queue is part of the visit even for online ticket holders, and the hourly admission gauge can hold an arrival back further. The route runs down from the third floor on stairs; visitors with reduced mobility can ask the surveillance staff to use the lift between floors rather than only at the start. Mobile scooters are not admitted, although manual and electric wheelchairs are. Accessible toilets are on level -2 of the Magritte Museum and on the ground floor of the Old Masters Museum. Expect the rooms to be dark: works on paper are lit to a maximum of 50 lux for conservation, which the museum also uses deliberately to concentrate attention on the pictures.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

Photography is allowed. A small number of works may not be photographed at the request of the collectors who lent them, and those are marked with a pictogram beside the label, so the rule is readable in the room rather than a matter of guesswork. Flash is strictly prohibited, and so are tripods and selfie sticks — a firm limit, because the galleries are dark by design. Works on paper are held to a maximum of 50 lux, and the whole circuit is lit low to match the intimate atmosphere the museum wants around the paintings. In practice that means a fast lens or a high ISO, hands braced against a wall or a bench, and no expectation that a phone will hold detail in the vitrines of archive material on level 3. The paintings under glass throw reflections; standing slightly off the perpendicular is the only fix available without a polariser. Individual visitors may also take notes or sketch in pencil, provided they neither disturb other visitors nor block the view of a work; groups may not, for the sake of circulation. Any organised photo, audio or video shoot needs authorisation in advance through the Museums' press officer, using their application form.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Where it is

Nearby

External links

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