Fodor's Expert Review Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA)

Finally reopened in 2022 after more than a decade of extensive restoration work, the Royal Museum of Fine Arts collection is studded with masterworks from Bruegel to Ensor, and is a must for any student of Flemish art. Paintings recovered from the French after the fall of Napoléon form the nucleus of a collection of 2,500 artworks. There are rooms devoted to both Peter Paul Rubens and to Anthony van Dyck, and other focused almost entirely on Jacob Jordaens and Bruegel. The collection of Flemish Primitives includes works by Van Eyck, Memling, Roger van der Weyden, Joachim Patinir, and Quinten Metsys. On the ground floor, there’s a representative survey of Belgian art of the past 150 years—Emile Claus, Rik Wouters, Permeke, Magritte, Delvaux, and especially James Ensor.