The area now known as Brussels has been inhabited since 2250 BC, when an agrarian Neolithic civilization set up shop in what are now the districts of Schaerbeek, Boitsfort and Uccle. The Romans considered the area a lovely corner of the empire, building villas here during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD.

The town continued to grow throughout the millennium. Legend has it that St Géry, bishop of Cambrai and Arras, built a chapel on one of the islands in the swampy Senne (Zenne). In 843, the Treaty of Verdun split the Frankish Empire along the Schelde (Scheldt) river: this was the first division of Belgian lands into what would become modern-day Wallonia and Vlaanderen (Flanders).

The settlement used its geography to maximum benefit, becoming a hub for trade and transportation in the region. Craftspeople and traders established businesses, while various princes, dukes and counts announced their ownership of the area with fortifications and castles. In 1229, Henri I, Duke of Brabant, published the first Brussels charter.

In 1302, Brussels' businesspeople, led by weavers and fullers, rebelled against the growing and privileged bourgeois class. Though they enjoyed early victories, they were eventually defeated by the army of Jean II, Duke of Brabant, at the Battle of Vilvoorde.

Unfazed, the merchant class continued making money hand over fist while the bourgeoisie fought among themselves. Burgundy controlled the region from 1384 to 1477, beginning Brussels' tradition of high fashion and good food, then lost control to the Hapsburgs, who built the 28km/17mi-long Willebroek Canal, spurring even more capital growth in the region.

In 1555, Charles V of the Hapsburg clan abdicated rule over Brussels to his son, Philip II of Spain. Religious, cultural and class differences between Brussels' cosmopolitan population and the new, distant ruler led to a wave of violent protests known as the Iconoclastic Fury. Spain managed to hold onto power in the region until the 1713 Treaty of Ultrecht, which settled the War of Spanish Succession by handing the Spanish Netherlands, including Belgium, to the Austrian Hapsburgs.

The Hapsburgs managed Brussels' continuing growth with some success until the revolution in neighbouring France gave the locals some ideas. But before the Belgians had time to get their act together, the French marched into town in 1794 and claimed the Austrian Netherlands for their own.

Of course, what goes around comes around, and when French head of state Napoleon Bonaparte came through in 1815, he stopped at a nice spot a few kilometres from Brussels called Waterloo. The bloodbath that followed resulted in the creation of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, incorporating modern-day Belgium and Luxembourg. On July 21, 1831, King Léopold became the first ruler of an independent Belgium.

Though Belgium remained neutral during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), tension was already growing between the Flemish and French-speaking peoples of the area, a linguistic division that partitions the country to this day. The following decades would see Léopold build something of a colonial empire with African holdings a whopping 70 times as large as Belgium itself.