Industrial Heritage

The Green 62 (Groene 62) in Belgium lives up to its name. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Wijnendale, where the excavated railway bed has transformed into a verdant microcosm.

Those who stroll along the canal near the Redersplein in Brussels will encounter a striking sight: a 1923 steam locomotive perched on an abandoned railway bridge spanning the Brussels-Scheldt Sea Canal.

Far above the Arctic Circle lies Kiruna, a Swedish city that reveals little at first glance. Yet the wealth, and the very reason for Kiruna’s existence, lies hidden deep underground.

What at first glance appears to be a forgotten industrial remnant turns out, on closer inspection, to tell a rich story about the agro-industry along the Scheldt river in Belgium.

An idyllic little park on the banks of the Scheldt gives no hint that you are standing next to one of the most heavily polluted industrial sites in Flanders.

Since 2023, a shunting locomotive from the NMBS (Belgian National Railways) has stood proudly at the entrance to Ougrée's new city boulevard. Its location was no coincidence. 

In a green oasis along the Rupel River, a concrete elevated walkway rises, seemingly leading nowhere, yet it still holds quite a story.

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.

In the early 1960s, a brutalist observatory rose from the ground on an expansive polder in Utrecht. From March 1964 onwards, students and astronomers could climb the so-called Star Tower to gaze at the sky.

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.