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Musée de la Vie Wallonne
In an adapted convent-cloister building, this curious display takes visitors on an amble through the region’s past, exploring everything from 12th-century Mosan metalwork to 1960s room interiors. Notable is the watercolour of the rooster thats now Wallonias symbol, but the highligh
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Château de Larochette
Larochettes dominantly positioned castle is accessed from the centre by steep paths or by a longer, gentler 2km road (start off towards Mersch then double back). Up close, the site is less complete than it appears from below, but exploring the castle lawns, wall stubs and stairways
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Tyne Cot
Probably the most visited Salient site, this is the world’s biggest British Commonwealth war cemetery, with 11,956 graves. A huge semicircular wall commemorates another 34,857 lost-in-action soldiers whose names wouldn’t fit on Ypres’ Menin Gate. The name Tyne Cot was coined by Nor
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Jeruzalemkerk
In western St-Anna is one of Bruges’ oddest churches, the 15th-century structure built by the Adornes family. Supposedly based upon Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it’s a macabre monument with a gruesome altarpiece covered in skull motifs and an effigy of Christ’s corpse
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Begijnhof
Bruges’ delightful begijnhof originally dates from the 13th century. Although the last begijn has long since passed away, today residents of the pretty, whitewashed garden complex include a convent of Benedictine nuns. Despite the hoards of summer tourists, the begijnhof remains a
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Butte du Lion
Waterloo’s most arresting sight is a steep, grassy cone topped by a massive bronze lion. It commemorates, incredibly, not victory nor the glorious dead but Prince William of Orange, wounded on this spot while co-commanding Allied troops. Building the mound took two years: women car
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Basilique des Saints
The grey stone church is the towns main sight. Its netting-draped late-Gothic interior has fine 1733 oak choir stalls topped by cross-headed stags, reflecting the legend of St Hubert, whose grave here made the former abbey into a major pilgrimage site from the 9th century. Guided v
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Verbeke Foundation
This foundation, one of Europes largest private initiatives for contemporary art, has a unique, boundary-pushing collection on a 12-hectare site that includes the warehouses of the former Verbeke transport agency. Much of the work here – installation, assemblage, eco and bio art th
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Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917
In central Zonnebeke village, Kasteel Zonnebeke is a lake-fronted Normandy chalet-style mansion built in 1922 to replace a castle bombarded into rubble during WWI. It hosts a tourist office, cafe and particularly polished WWI museum charting local battle progressions with plenty of
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Broussaille
Painted in 1991 by Frank Pé, Broussaille was the citys first giant mural and depicts a young couple arm in arm. This strip is located in Brussels gay-nightlife hub and, in the original version, it was difficult to tell whether the couple was a man and a woman or two men. Gay establ
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Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek
The elegant Onze Lieve Vrouwebasiliek is a large, mostly 14th- to 16th-century church whose stone tower dominates Tongeren’s neatly cafe-lined Grote Markt. The church marks the first place north of the Alps where the Virgin Mary is said to have been worshipped, and every seventh ye
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Château de Reinhardstein
On the southernmost edge of Ovifat, an idyllic little streamside lane descends 500m from a small car park to the very picturesque Château de Reinhardstein. Originally built in 1354 and restored to archetypal fortress appearance in 1969, the castle can only be visited by guided tour
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Le Parc
Sitting on partly covered truck wagons in this enjoyable 75-minute excursion, you’re driven several kilometres past and through woodland and meadow enclosures stocked with wolf, lynx, bison, eagle owls, Przewalski’s horses and other rare European fauna. The scenery is very pretty a
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Rue des Bouchers
Uniquely colourful Rue and Petite Rue des Bouchers are a pair of narrow alleys jam-packed with pavement tables, pyramids of lemons and iced displays of fish and crustaceans. It’s all gloriously photogenic, but think twice before eating here, as the food standards are generally poor
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Le Bois du Cazier
This sizeable complex occupies a mine site where a horrific accident killed 262 miners in 1956. A gripping multilingual video commemorates that; admission also includes access to a museum celebrating Charleroi’s heyday as a centre of steel, glass and coal industries. A glass collec
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Forêt de Soignes
This vast suburban forest about a 40-minute drive from Brussels is a botanical cathedral of glorious towering beech trees. Many were planted by proto-Belgium’s 18th-century Austrian rulers, with oaks added by the French to provide timber for future naval ships. By the time those tr
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Colonne du Congrès
Brussels’ 25m-tall version of Nelson’s Column is an 1850s monolith topped by a gilded statue of King Léopold I. It commemorates the Belgian constitution of 1831. The four female figures around its base represent the four constitutionally upheld freedoms of religion, association, ed
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Zimmertoren
Lier’s most iconic monument is the photogenic Zimmertoren, a partly 14th-century tower incorporating a fanciful 1930 timepiece that’s eccentrically over-endowed with dials, zodiac signs, and a globe on which the Congo remains forever Belgian. Figures on the south face perform bell-
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Historium
The Historium occupies a neo-Gothic building on the northern side of the Markt. Taking visitors back to 1435, it is a multimedia experience, claiming to be more medieval movie than museum. The immersive one-hour audio and video tour aims to take you back to medieval Bruges: a ficti
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Cathédrale St
The central cathedral has soaring Gothic vaults, an elaborate neo-Gothic pulpit, colourfully patterned ceiling and fine stained-glass windows. Off the closed-in cloister, its slickly presented three-level Trésor guards many artworks, vestments and chalices rescued from St-Lambert’s
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