Your guide to discover
hidden heritage sites in
Belgium and Europe

The city of Carbonia emerged in a completely remote area of Sardinia in 1938. It wasn't easy to imagine a more striking name: everything here centred around the coal mine, the first thing one sees upon entering the city.

A blue harbour crane dominates Dock North. Built in 1973 by Boom Metalworks, it was the last crane installed at the Handelsdok.

Organisation Todt, Nazi Germany's construction company, sent an army of forced labourers to an old marl quarry in the Netherlands in the spring of 1944 to convert it into an aircraft engine maintenance site.

At the place where the Leuven professor of geology and mining, André Dumont dug up the Limburg soil from 1901 to find coal, a monument commemorates his find.

Two metal headframes in Charleroi are a last reminder of the glorious past of the Pêchon coal mine, where coal has been extracted since 1910.

During the Second World War, the historic naval harbour of Hellevoetsluis in South Holland grew into an essential stronghold within the Atlantic Wall, the 5,000-kilometre-long coastal defence system of Nazi Germany.

The remains of a Pegelturm, or water-level tower, lie at the foot of the cliffs of Cape Arkona on the German island of Rügen.

Since Roman times, the Aiako Harria massif in the Basque Country has been mined for iron ores. Iron ore mining gained momentum in the mid-19th century.