The Adventures of Tintin: Hergé's Brussels

Tintin begins here. Hergé was born on 22 May 1907 in Etterbeek, a central suburb of Brussels, in a house at 25 rue Cranz, now 33 rue Philippe Baucq. Growing up in bilingual Brussels, he learned Dutch as well as his father's French and picked up a Marollien accent from his maternal grandmother. The family soon moved to another house nearby. Only the street can be visited today, and the pin marks the modern address.

Location precision: The house is a private home; the pin marks the present-day rue Philippe Baucq address given for the birth house, not a museum.

In The Secret of the Unicorn, Tintin wanders the Brussels flea market at the Vossenplein in the Marollen and buys an antique model ship, and two strangers soon try to buy it from him. The real square in the heart of the Marolles district has held a flea market, the Old Market, since 1873, so you can browse the same kind of stalls today.

Visitor guidance: The Old Market still fills the square; ask locally for market hours.

Hergé's hometown honours its comics in an Art Nouveau building at 20 rue des Sables. Victor Horta designed it in 1905 as a textile department store, and the museum was inaugurated on 6 October 1989. Its permanent exhibition on Belgian comics starts with Hergé, and the centre added exhibits dedicated to him in 2004. The Brussels Comic Book Route, a trail of comic murals, painted its first Tintin mural in July 2005.

Visitor guidance: A museum at 20 rue des Sables; the Comic Book Route murals are painted on walls around the centre.

The Hergé Museum opened in June 2009 in Louvain-la-Neuve, south of Brussels, in a futuristic building by Christian de Portzamparc with interiors by the cartoonist Joost Swarte. Eight permanent galleries show original artwork and Hergé's life, and the largest room is devoted to the places in the world Tintin travelled. It is the place to see how a Brussels cartoonist mapped Tintin's world.

Visitor guidance: South of Brussels in Louvain-la-Neuve.

In Destination Moon, Professor Calculus is commissioned by the Syldavian government to secretly build a spacecraft that will fly to the Moon. Since 2015 a 6 m (20 ft) tall sculpture of that rocket stands at Brussels Airport, a Tintin landmark for visitors. The pin marks the airport; the exact place of the sculpture is not given.

Location precision: The sources say the rocket sculpture is at Brussels Airport but not where; the pin marks the airport.

Visitor guidance: Check the airport for the sculpture's current position.