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Tues-Sun 10am-6pm; ?6.20. Reference Library Tues-Thurs noon-5pm, Fri noon-6pm, Sat 10am-6pm; no extra charge. Metro: Botanique . Heading east from the place des Martyrs, you'll take about five minutes to walk to the city's only surviving Horta-designed department store, the Grand Magasin Waucquez , situated amongst run-down offices and warehouses at rue des Sables 20. Recently restored after lying empty for many years, it's a wonderfully airy, summery construction, with light flooding through the glass and stained glass that encloses the expansive entrance hall. It was completed in 1906, built for a textile tycoon, and exhibits all the classic features of Horta's work - from the soft lines of the ornamentation to the metal grilles, exposed girders and balustrades. Around the entrance hall is a cafe, the Brasserie Horta , as well as the reference library, bookshop and ticket office of the Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinee . The centre's displays are extensive and diverting and though the labelling is in French and Flemish only, an English guidebook is available free at reception. The exhibits begin at the top of the first flight of stairs with a modest section outlining the processes involved in drawing comic strips and cartoon animation. There's also a small auditorium offering non-stop cartoons and documentaries. On the two floors above, the grandly titled "Museum of the Imagination" begins by tracing the development of the Belgian comic strip up until 1960 in broadly chronological order, with an especially interesting section on Tintin , the creation of Brussels-born Georges Remi , aka Herge (1907-83). Remi's first efforts (non-Tintin) had been sponsored by a right-wing Catholic journal, Le XXeme Siecle , and in 1929 when this same paper produced a kids' supplement - Le Petit Vingtieme - Remi was given his first major break. Remi was responsible for a two-page comic strip and he created Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , a didactic tale about the evils of Bolshevism. Tintin's Soviet adventure lasted until May 1930, and the director of Le XXeme Siecle decided to stage a reception - as a PR stunt - to celebrate Tintin's return. Remi - along with a Tintin lookalike - hopped on a train just east of Brussels and when they pulled into the capital they were mobbed by scores of excited children. Remi and Tintin never looked back. Remi decided on the famous quiff straight away, but other features - the mouth and expressive eyebrows - only came later. His popularity was - and remains - quite phenomenal. Tintin has been translated into fifty languages and over twenty million copies of the comic Le Journal de Tintin , Remi's own independent creation, have been sold. First published in 1946, this Journal also helped to popularize the work of some of the country's most creative cartoonists, including Willy Vandersteen and Edgar-Pierre Jacobs , whose theatrical compositions and fluent combination of genres - science fiction, fantasy and crime - are displayed in his Blake and Mortimer . Belgium's oldest comic-strip paper, the Spiro Journal , performed a similar service and was responsible for launching the career of Andre Franquin , the creator of the feckless anti-hero Gaston Lagaffe . Sadly, Spiro was also where The Smurfs first saw light of day, the creation of Peyo, in 1958. On the top floor, the "Museum of Modern Comic Strips" looks at new trends and themes. The comic strip has long ceased to be primarily aimed at children, but now focuses on the adult (sometimes very adult) market. A series of regularly rotated displays ably illustrates some of the best of this new work and there's also a programme of temporary exhibitions.
La Boutique Tintin, just off the Grand-Place at rue dela Colline 13, has all manner of Tintin paraphernalia.
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