Grand Place is one of Europe's great civic squares, and it very nearly wasn't. In 1695, French artillery reduced most of it to rubble in a two-day bombardment that destroyed a third of Brussels. Only the Town Hall survived. The city's guilds rebuilt the rest within four years, which is why so many facades are dated 1696 and 1697, and the result was arguably better than what came before. UNESCO agreed, listing it as a World Heritage Site in 1998.

The square has been a market, a jousting ground and a place of public execution. Its guild houses each carry their own architectural signature: the Boatmen's Guildhouse has a roofline shaped like a galleon's stern, while the Brewers' Guild displays sculpted hops and wheat in gold.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours use Grand Place to trace Brussels' commercial rise from medieval marsh to European capital, connecting its guild emblems, royal history and the city's irreverent spirit to the streets that radiate from it.