The Royal Palace Opens to Anyone Who Walks In, Every Summer, for Nothing

The Royal Palace of Brussels is the monarch's administrative seat rather than a residence: the royal family lives at Laeken, and the palace on the Place des Palais is where audiences are held, ambassadors received and state business conducted. Every summer, from shortly after the national day on 21 July until early September, it opens the state rooms to the public, free of charge, with no ticket required.

The building itself is a nineteenth century composition on an older site, remodelled repeatedly and given its present facade under Leopold II. The route takes visitors through the grand staircase, the Throne Room with its chandeliers, the Empire Room and a sequence of reception rooms whose scale is a reminder that this is a working diplomatic building rather than a museum.

The room people remember is the Hall of Mirrors, and not for the mirrors. In 2002 the artist Jan Fabre covered its ceiling in the iridescent wing cases of jewel beetles, a work titled Heaven of Delight, commissioned at the invitation of Queen Paola. The surface shifts between green and blue as the light moves. Placing a contemporary installation of that kind permanently in a royal state room was a decision that drew argument at the time and has aged into one of the palace's best known features.

Each summer opening also carries a themed exhibition, usually assembled with scientific institutions, museums or federal bodies, on a subject the palace wants associated with the crown: polar research, biodiversity, industrial heritage. The choice of theme is one of the few editorial signals the institution sends in a year.

The free entry is the point of the exercise. A monarchy whose constitutional powers have been narrowed to almost nothing sustains itself on visibility and consent, and opening the state rooms to anyone prepared to queue is the cheapest and most direct form of both. It is also, for a few weeks a year, one of the better free things to do in Brussels.