Textile industry

A monument erected at the end of the twentieth century to pay tribute to the city's wool industry proves that Verviers was once the focal point of the Belgian wool industry.

Verviers, the Belgian capital of the wool industry, had dozens of spinning mills, weaving mills, bleaching mills, cloth manufacturers and so-called conditioning buildings, the first stop for the wool delivered to the city.

The former Delhaize brush factory is one of Bruges' most striking and best-preserved industrial heritage sites.

The Vesdre River became best known for its heavy flooding in the summer of 2021, but it also brought wealth and industry to Verviers and the surrounding area. Since the Middle Ages, the wool industry flourished in the towns along the Vesder.

The banks of the Vesder in Pepinster are flanked by one of the most iconic facades of a textile factory, that of Textile de Pepinster.

For years, Izegem has been the Belgian shoe and brush city par excellence. Today, the art-deco building of shoe manufacturer Eperon d'Or hides an impressive industrial heritage site.

The Alsberge-Van Oost bleaching plant was founded in 1879. A century later, it collapsed and was left vacant for years.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the Sanitary Underwear Company emerged as the second-largest textile factory in Zottegem, East Flanders.

The Bijgaardehof, the former place where monks of St. Bavo's Abbey grew bees during the Middle Ages, was buried under the buildings of the Baertsoen-Buysse spinning mill at the end of the nineteenth century.

Spinning mills, weaving mills, dyers and twisting mills: in the Belgian town of Ronse, you stumble over the remains of the textile past.