Situated around the corner from the Royal Palace and across the square from Eglise Sainte Jacques-sur-Caudenberg, are the Royal Museums of Fine Arts. Consisting of three separate museums within the same building, the more than 20,000 items are dedicated to sculptures, drawings, and paintings from the 15th century up to the present. King Leopold II funded the organization of the museum and it opened in 1887. The three separate museums making up this collection are;
Museum of Old Masters - a fine collection of Flemish artisans;
Museum of Fin de Siècle - 1865 art from the Free Society of Fine Art;
Museum Margritte - a rich collection of surrealistic art.
On the side of the building is a memorial dedicated to five members of the Belgium resistance, known as the National Royalist Movement, who were killed during the liberation of Brussels in 1944.