Fresque Gaston Lagaffe: The Spirit of Franquin

Why is it significant?

Look up at the towering gable wall at the corner of Rue du Rempart des Moines and Rue de la Senne, where a colossal two-story comic mural bursts with color and slapstick humor.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Look up at the towering gable wall at the corner of Rue du Rempart des Moines and Rue de la Senne, where a colossal two-story comic mural bursts with color and slapstick humor. Here sits Gaston Lagaffe, the famously idle, accident-prone office boy created in nineteen fifty-seven by genius Belgian cartoonist André Franquin for Spirou magazine. Franquin's loose, energetic pen lines and masterly sense of comic timing are faithfully enlarged across the brick wall, capturing every nuance of his chaotic graphic style.

Gaston is depicted in his signature oversized green turtleneck sweater, worn-out espadrilles, and disheveled hair, relaxing in an ingenious, chaotic motorized contraption made from junk, while his pet cat and laughing gull look on with mischievous delight. Gaston's motto, 'M'enfin?!', meaning 'Well, really?!', remains a universal catchphrase of affectionate exasperation across Belgium. Franquin created Gaston originally as a minor filler character to occupy blank margins in Spirou magazine, but the anti-hero proved so wildly popular with readers that he was quickly given his own full-page series.

This vibrant mural is part of the Brussels Comic Book Route, or Parcours BD, an imaginative municipal initiative launched in nineteen ninety-one to celebrate Belgium's graphic art heritage while revitalizing weathered urban gable walls. Today, more than sixty giant painted comic murals transform the streets of Brussels into an open-air museum.

Notice the street name beneath the mural: Rue de la Senne. Beneath the asphalt here ran one of the original waterways of the Senne River, which was vaulted and buried underground in the eighteen seventies to eliminate cholera. The comic trail deliberately brings vibrant life and color back to the ancient working-class streets that were once watercourses. The Brussels comic mural trail now spans over sixty individual painted facades, forming the longest and most famous open-air comic art itinerary in the world.

Walk east along Rue des Riches Claires, cross Boulevard Anspach, and enter the lively terrace square of the Halles Saint-Géry.