With its handsome squares, cobbled alleyways, excellent restaurants and smart shops, Antwerp is a buzzing, stylish town, famous for its diamonds, arts and fashion.

Belgium’s second city has been the diamond capital of the world for centuries. Armed guards and traders with handcuffed briefcases announce that you are in the Diamond Quarter, while dozens of shops sell discounted ‘rocks’.

Antwerp, home of the Flemish Baroque master Peter Paul Rubens, also has a wealth of outstanding museums and galleries.

Antwerp’s port is Europe’s second (after Rotterdam), one of the 10 largest in the world, and principal source of the city’s wealth. The importance of Antwerp’s maritime heritage will be celebrated with the opening of the new MAS museum in late 2010.

Antwerp gained fame during the 1980s through the efforts of the ‘Antwerp Six’. These six avant-garde designers’ legacy is very much alive today, not just in the Fashion Museum, or in the Antwerp Fashion Academy school, but on many streets, where it seems that every other shop window is a designer statement.

Bruges (Brugge) is without doubt one of the gems of northwest Europe, offering the visitor a rich combination of history and Flemish architectural splendours in a compact city centre, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2000.

The city followed this up by becoming a European Capital of Culture two years later. Its importance as a destination belies its relatively small size (Bruges’ population stands at around 117,000), attracting millions of visitors year round.

There is no doubt that a visit to Bruges is a rewarding experience. The city is a sheer pleasure just to wander around, discovering street after street of pretty Flemish buildings, delightful restaurants and bars, and more than its fair share of imposing historic monuments.

The climb to the top of the Belfry tower is not to be missed, neither is a boat ride along the picturesque waterways of the old city.

The city’s name is believed to derive from the Old Norse bryggja, meaning landing stage or wharf, and Bruges’ fortunes reached their zenith in the 13th and early 14th centuries, when the city was the most important trading centre in northwestern Europe.

Things went downhill until the late 19th century, when Bruges once more came ‘back to life’, ironically almost entirely due to Georges Rodenbach’s novel Bruges la Morte, which awakened international interest in what had become a sleepy backwater.

Modern Bruges is a dynamic, friendly, place, with a strong arts culture and all the ingredients of a successful tourist centre.

From its breathtaking medieval centre to its 21st-century temple to Surrealism, the new Magritte Museum, Brussels offers the visitor a great deal more than just beer and chocolate.

Brussels’s compact city centre is clustered with bars, restaurants and museums set along cobbled streets which open suddenly into the Grand-Place. With its ornate guild houses, impressive Town Hall and buzzing atmosphere, it would be difficult to find a more beautiful square in the whole of Europe.

Léopold II’s Parisian-style boulevards (Belliard and La Loi) are lined with embassies, banks and grand apartment buildings, while Sainte Cathérine, the Art Nouveau district of St-Gilles and Ixelles draw an arty crowd with their cool shops and restaurants.

The Bruxellois take pride in their self-effacing, intellectual sense of humour, underpinned by a strong appreciation of the bizarre. The city has a long-running love affair with the Surrealist art movement, pioneered by René Magritte, and with classic comic strips, epitomised by Hergé’s boy hero, Tintin. There’s a telling irony in the fact that the city’s best-known landmark is the Manneken-Pis, a tiny statuette of a urinating boy.