How to walk or cycle the Promenade Verte in Brussels

The Promenade Verte is a route of 63 km that allows walkers and cyclists to circle Brussels while discovering its history and nature. Here’s your guide to walk or cycle it. UPDATED MAY 2026.

Introducing the Promenade Verte

Most people know Brussels for its petite ceinture, the inner ring road that encircles the city. Far fewer know about the other ring. This is a quiet, well-signposted 63 km loop that takes you around the city’s edge at an entirely different pace. No traffic queues, no junction altercations. It’s called the Promenade Verte.

Created by Brussels Environment, it traces a broad circle through the city’s outermost districts, threading together hidden forests, surprising parks, old orchards, canal paths, and even the occasional agricultural holdout that has somehow survived the urban sprawl. Along the way it passes through nineteen communes and touches every distinct landscape that the Brussels-Capital Region has to offer.

It is divided into seven stages, each with its own character. Some are serene and deeply green. Others are frankly urban, but reward the patient walker or cyclist with unexpected pockets of nature and history. The route can be walked in sections across several days, or cycled in a single energetic day.

Before you go

A few things worth knowing before you set off:

• Direction: You can walk or cycle clockwise or anti-clockwise. The route is equally well signed in both directions.
• Sections: Each stage starts and ends at a named point. You can join or leave the route at any stage. They’re not all equally beautiful. Some have genuinely urban stretches, but even those have their moments.
• Pedestrians and cyclists: In several places the route splits to give walkers and cyclists their own path. Follow the signs carefully.
• Signage: The Promenade Verte is well marked throughout with green signs, and the signposts double as information panels about the landscape you’re moving through.
• Bikes: To rent a bike in Brussels, try Cyclo or ProVelo. Both offer city bikes suitable for this kind of ride.
• GPX file: The Brussels Environment website offers a downloadable GPX file and a detailed 71-page route brochure. The route is also available on the RouteYou app, which makes navigation straightforward even without prior knowledge of the area.
• Facilities: Public toilets are scarce along the route. Cafés are your best bet at regular intervals, particularly in the more residential stages.

Stage 1: Heyzel Plateau and Royal Parks

The Promenade Verte begins (or ends, depending on your direction) on the plateau of Heyzel, in the northern reaches of Brussels. It’s immediately interesting territory. From the start point near Place Saint-Lambert, the route passes through the royal domain of Laeken: a landscape of sweeping parkland, tree-lined avenues, and buildings that speak to Belgium’s dynastic ambitions.

Look left as you follow the route along the Avenue Van Praet and you’ll see the Chinese Pavilion and the Japanese Tower. These are two extraordinary late-19th-century follies commissioned by King Leopold II, who had a particular fondness for exotic architecture funded by rather less exotic methods. Both are now royal museums.

The route continues through the Jardins du Floriste, the former royal gardens, before climbing to a panoramic viewpoint over the city. It’s one of the better Brussels vistas available to anyone on foot. From here, the descent into Schaerbeek is more utilitarian, but the stage finishes with a flourish: the magnificent Gare de Schaerbeek, a pink and white brick railway station of such ornate impracticality that it qualifies as a small architectural event.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of stage 1: Villa des Roses Voltaire or Courtyard by Marriott Brussels.

Stage 2: Between Senne and Woluwe

This is the most urban of the seven stages, and the one most likely to test your commitment to the route. The path here connects green spaces through streets that are, by turns, dull and occasionally grim. But perseverance pays off, and there is a good deal for the amateur historian to enjoy.

The stage passes the Brussels Cemetery, which rewards a short detour. Among those buried here are Jules Anspach and Charles de Brouckère, two of the 19th-century mayors who shaped modern Brussels. More unexpectedly, the cemetery is the final resting place of Jacques-Louis David, the French neoclassical painter who fled to Brussels in 1816 after supporting Napoleon and refusing to beg Louis XVIII for a pardon. He died here in 1825 and, despite his family’s later attempts to repatriate his remains, the Belgian authorities declined. His heart, it is said, was returned to Paris. The rest of him stayed in Brussels.

There is also a notable link to the First World War here: the cemetery contains military graves from the Belgian Revolution, the Franco-Prussian War, and both world wars, offering a quietly moving reminder of the conflicts that repeatedly swept through this corner of Europe.

Stage 2 also reveals Parc Walckiers, a four-and-a-half hectare park that was closed to the public for years before finally opening as part of the Promenade Verte’s recently completed final section in 2024.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 2: Tangla Hotel or Roxi Urban Residence.

Stage 3: Woluwe Valley

This is where the Promenade Verte starts to feel genuinely beautiful. The Woluwe valley is one of those Brussels secrets that residents of other parts of the city often haven’t discovered. It’s a string of large landscaped parks descending through the south-east of the city, past ponds and through wooded paths, into what feels improbably like countryside.

The stage passes through Malou Park, Woluwe Park, and the Seny and Ten Reuken parks in quick succession before arriving at the Tournay-Solvay Park. This is perhaps the most formally beautiful green space on the entire route. Its rose garden is immaculate, and its clipped hedges are smartly turned out.

Along the way, watch out for the Mellaert Ponds, where rowing boats can be hired in season and waterfowl of various persuasions gather regardless. The Bezemhoek quarter is a pleasant surprise too: a small cluster of brick houses with the slightly removed quality of a village that has been quietly absorbed into the city but hasn’t quite noticed yet.

There’s a reason this section is one of the most popular on the route. If you’re walking the Promenade Verte in stages and can only do one, this is a strong candidate.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 3: B&B Le Verger.

Stage 4: Forêt de Soignes to Uccle

If Stage 3 is the most elegantly beautiful section of the Promenade Verte, Stage 4 is the most magnificent. This is where the route passes through the Sonian Forest, which is not a place you quickly forget.

The forest covers more than 4,400 hectares at the south-eastern edge of Brussels, spanning all three Belgian regions: Brussels-Capital, Flanders, and Wallonia. Its best-protected sections have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2017. It’s the only natural World Heritage site in Belgium. It is part of a group of 94 ancient beech forests across 18 European countries. The designation recognises the forest as a living testament to the evolution of the European beech ecosystem since the last Ice Age.

Walking through the Sonian is an atmospheric experience. Some of the beeches here are more than 200 years old, reaching up to 50 metres in height, their canopies forming what writers have long called a cathedral: a vaulted green space in which sound softens and the city recedes completely. Roe deer move through the undergrowth. Six species of woodpecker live here. The forest is also home to 18 species of bat, more than anywhere else in Belgium.

The route passes through the woods and then descends through the green spaces of southern Uccle, including the nature reserves of Kinsendael and Kriekenput, both threaded by small streams and rich in alder and ash woodland. This is also the ideal place for a picnic stop if you’re tackling the whole loop by bike in a single day.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 4: B&B Uccle

Stage 5: Vogelzangbeek to Geleytsbeek

The longest stage on the route, and the most varied. It begins in the green quiet of south Uccle and ends in Anderlecht. This stage covers a lot of urban ground but keeps you’ll find green space in unexpected places.

Along the way, the route crosses the Brussels Canal. You are reminded that this city was once a significant industrial port. The canal offers one of the rare moments on the entire Promenade Verte where you catch a glimpse of the Senne, the river that gave Brussels its original reason to exist but was almost entirely buried underground in the 19th century during sweeping urban redevelopment.

The Bemptpark is a good place to pause. Its model railway has been running for decades and has a pleasingly eccentric quality. The Vogelzangbeek nature reserve provides a green corridor through what is otherwise a dense urban area, and the Geleytsbeek valley offers fine walking along its wooded banks.

This is also Anderlecht, of course, home to the Erasmus House, to a famous football club, and to the historic Beguinage, one of the finest in Flanders. None of these are directly on the route, but all are close enough for a detour.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 5: Ibis Brussels Erasmus

Stage 6: Pajottenland

This is the stage that steps outside the city entirely. The route here crosses into the Pajottenland. This is the gently undulating agricultural landscape west of Brussels, famous in Belgium for its lambic beers and its association with Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Bruegel spent the last decade of his life (1559-1569) living just a few kilometres away on the Hoogstraat in Brussels, and regularly walked out into this landscape to paint. The rolling fields, the farmsteads, the village churches, the orchards and the wide Flemish skies all appear in his work. His painting The Blind Leading the Blind is believed to feature the church of Sint-Anna-Pede, just beyond the stage’s western edge. Looking out across the Pede valley, it’s easy to see why this part of Brussels’ hinterland held him.

The route passes through the Parc de la Pede and the quiet lanes of the Pede valley before entering the Scheutbos. In this wooded area you might, if you’re quiet and lucky, spot a herd of Scottish Galloway cattle grazing among the trees. Their presence here, shaggy and prehistoric-looking in a Brussels suburb, is one of the small inexplicable pleasures of the Promenade Verte.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 6: Maison Agathe or MiMi.

Stage 7: Molenbeek Valley

The final stage completes the loop and, as final stages should, builds to a satisfying conclusion. It begins in Molenbeek, a commune that comes with a reputation few places deserve. And it quickly reveals a side of the area that surprises almost everyone who walks or cycles it.

The valley of the Molenbeek stream is a genuine green corridor running north through parks, marshes, meadows and woodland. The Marais de Jette-Ganshoren is a small wetland area just 500 metres from the E19 motorway, which produces one of the most improbable moments on the whole route: a stretch of path where you can stand in what feels like open countryside in the middle of a capital city.

The route then moves through the long, thin Parc Roi Baudouin in Jette (fine parkland with waterfowl and a small animal farm) before threading through the forests of Laarbeekbos and Dielegembos. From here, it’s a short walk back to Place Saint-Lambert and the start.

The loop is complete. Brussels looks different once you’ve walked or cycled its green ring. Smaller in some ways as you understand its geography better. Larger in others, as you hadn’t expected quite so much of it to be trees.

Recommended convenient accommodation at end of Stage 7: B&B Marianne

Any questions on how to walk or cycle the Promenade Verte, just drop me a line.

Denzil Walton

I created Discovering Belgium in 2011 to share the country’s hidden stories, fascinating places, and remarkable people. Through articles, photography, and audio walks, I share discoveries that reveal Belgium beyond the obvious. Hope you enjoy this site.