TO GO WITH AFP STORY BY Laurent Thomet.A picture taken on July 28, 2011 shows stuffed rhinoceros at the Brussels Royal Institute for Natural Sciences Museum. It was a daring daytime robbery at the natural science museum. The two thieves snuck into the rhino gallery and ripped a stuffed head off the wall. They carried it to a restroom, opened a window, and dropped the 30-kilo trophy two-stories down to an accomplice waiting in a van. The museum had never been robbed until the July heist, when it became the latest of a rising number of science museums in Europe targetted by thieves for rhino horns, which can fetch tens of thousands of euros on the black market.  AFP PHOTO / GEORGES GOBET (Photo credit should read GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)

AFP/Getty Images

Institut des Sciences Naturelles

Top choice in Brussels


Thought-provoking and highly interactive, this museum has far more than the usual selection of stuffed animals. But the undoubted highlight is a unique ‘family’ of iguanodons – 10m-high dinosaurs found in a Hainaut coal mine in 1878. A computer simulation shows the mudslide that might have covered them, sand-boxes allow you to play dino hunter and multilingual videos give a wonderfully nuanced debate on recent palaeontology.

The bus here departs from next to Gare Centrale in the direction of Homborch, stopping at De Meeus on Rue du Luxembourg.

Transportation

  • bus: 38

Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Brussels attractions

1. Musée Antoine Wiertz

0.07 MILES

If you're into the shocking or nasty, this museum may appeal. Antoine Wiertz (1806–65) was a Brussels artist bent on painting giant religious canvases…

2. EU Parliament

0.14 MILES

Inside this decidedly dated blue-glass building (completed only just over a decade ago) political junkies can sit in on a parliamentary session in the…

3. Parc Léopold

0.17 MILES

Steep-sloping Parc Léopold was Brussels Zoo until 1880 and now forms an unexpectedly pleasant oasis, hidden away just behind the EU Parliament.

4. House of European History

0.21 MILES

Housed in the beautifully renovated Eastman Building in Parc Léopold, this airy, elegant new museum takes you into some dark corners of European history,…

5. Parlamentarium

0.25 MILES

The visitor centre of the EU Parliament makes a valiant multimedia attempt to engage visitors, with an interactive floor map allowing you to tour the EU,…

6. Kuumba Cultural Centre

0.47 MILES

The Kuumba Cultural Centre organises tours of the district, plus excellent events featuring Congolese bands, dance workshops and food.

7. Berlaymont Building

0.56 MILES

The European Commission, the EU’s sprawling bureaucracy, centres on the vast, four-winged Berlaymont building. Built in 1967, it’s striking but by no…

8. Audrey Hepburn's Childhood Home

0.67 MILES

In 1929, My Fair Lady screen superstar Audrey Hepburn was born to a Dutch mother in Brussels. The exterior of their home has a commemorative plaque.

  • placement: superzone
  • path: Destinations/POIs/superzone
  • possible size: [970, 250], [970, 90], [728, 90], [1, 1],
  • targeting:
    {
      "url": "belgium/brussels/eu-quarter-etterbeek/attractions/institut-des-sciences-naturelles/a/poi-sig/405012/1342452",
      "destination": "Brussels",
      "continent": "Europe",
      "country": "Belgium",
      "city": "Brussels",
      "position": "superzone"
    }