Things to do in Belgium

A German fire control post overlooking the beach at Bredene serves as a reminder of the large-scale defensive works of the Second World War.

The neo-Gothic station building of Binche today forms the impressive terminus of a railway line that once continued all the way to the border station of Erquelinnes.

Did industrialist Évence-Narcisse Coppée II restart his coke factory in 1915 to supply benzol to the German occupier? That question was at the heart of a lawsuit against Coppée in which his coke factory played the leading role.

When the Dutch king William I took the reins of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1815, a merger of Belgium and the Netherlands, he began constructing canals.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, electric power experienced its breakthrough. During the Brussels World Exhibition of 1910 and the Ghent World Exhibition of 1913, electric lighting left visitors in awe. Electricity also played a starring role at the Universal Exhibition of Charleroi.

The clay pits of Terhagen in Belgium are part of a vast extraction area along the Rupel River, where clay was mined on an industrial scale throughout the 20th century for brickworks.

In the early twentieth century, Ghent, Belgium, made a massive switch to electric power for trams, street lighting, and harbour cranes. To meet the growing demand, the city commissioned the construction of coal-fired power stations.

During his visit to the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris, Belgian King Leopold II was enchanted by the attraction Tour du Monde — a colourful collection of Japanese towers, Chinese gateways, and galleries in Hindu style.

During the heyday of coal mining, cable winches were standard equipment in every coal mine. Such a winch was used, for example, to install the steel elevator cables.

Clay pits had, from the end of the nineteenth century, taken over more than half of the territory of the hamlet of Terhagen in Belgium. After excavation, nature gradually reclaimed its space.