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There is a version of Brussels in July that most visitors do not find. Not the Grand-Place, not the tourist circuits, but the city that belongs to the people who live here: the parks in the morning, the Wednesday market at the Châtelain, the open-air cinema in the grounds of an abbey. This version of the city is easier to reach from Ixelles than from anywhere else.

Brussels has a habit of doing things exceptionally well without drawing attention to itself. It has more Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than Paris. It has one of the most significant concentrations of Art Nouveau architecture in the world, embedded into residential streets where people live in these buildings without treating them as monuments. It produces chocolate that other countries have been trying to replicate for over a century, and beer that serious drinkers travel specifically to find. None of this is loudly announced. The city tends to let the things speak for themselves.

It takes a certain kind of trip to find this version of Brussels. It tends to happen when you slow down.

Most visitors to Brussels stay in the centre and move outward from there. The Louise quarter works the other way around.