UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Belgium

UNESCO's Description

La Grand-Place in Brussels is a remarkably homogeneous body of public and private buildings, dating mainly from the late 17th century. The architecture provides a vivid illustration of the level of social and cultural life of the period in this important political and commercial centre.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

In the 10th century, Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, constructed a fort on Saint-Géry Island, the furthest inland point at which the river Senne was still navigable. The installation of a fort at this point marks the origin of what would become Brussels. By the end of the 11th century, an open-air marketplace was set up on a dried-up marsh near the fort that was surrounded by sandbanks. A document from 1174 mentions this lower market (Latin: forum inferius) not far from the port (Latin: portus) on the Senne. It was called the Nedermerckt (meaning "Lower Market" in Old Dutch) and likely grew around the same time as Brussels' commercial development.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q215429 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

The four hydraulic boat-lifts on this short stretch of the historic Canal du Centre are industrial monuments of the highest quality. Together with the canal itself and its associated structures, they constitute a remarkably well-preserved and complete example of a late-19th-century industrial landscape. Of the eight hydraulic boat-lifts built at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the only ones in the world which still exist in their original working condition are these four lifts on the Canal du Centre.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History and current status

Along a particular 7 km (4.3 mi) stretch of the Canal du Centre, which connects the river basins of the Meuse and the Scheldt, the water level rises by 66.2 metres (217 ft). To overcome this difference, the 15.4 metres (51 ft) lift at Houdeng-Goegnies was opened in 1888. The other three lifts, each with a 16.93 metres (55.5 ft) rise, opened in 1917.

The elevators are double, consisting of two vertically mobile tanks or caissons, each supported in the centre by an iron column. The two columns are hydraulically linked in such a way that one caisson rises as the other descends, the weight of one counterbalancing the weight of the other.

These lifts were designed by Edwin Clark from the British company Clark, Stansfield & Clark.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q99372 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

Twenty-three belfries in the north of France and the belfry of Gembloux in Belgium were inscribed in 2005, as an extension to the 32 Belgian belfries inscribed in 1999 as Belfries of Flanders and Wallonia. Built between the 11th and 17th centuries, they showcase the Roman, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles of architecture. They are highly significant tokens of the winning of civil liberties. While Italian, German and English towns mainly opted to build town halls, in part of north-western Europe, greater emphasis was placed on building belfries. Compared with the keep (symbol of the seigneurs) and the bell-tower (symbol of the Church), the belfry, the third tower in the urban landscape, symbolizes the power of the aldermen. Over the centuries, they came to represent the influence and wealth of the towns.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

UNESCO's Description

The four major town houses - Hôtel Tassel, Hôtel Solvay, Hôtel van Eetvelde, and Maison & Atelier Horta - located in Brussels and designed by the architect Victor Horta, one of the earliest initiators of Art Nouveau, are some of the most remarkable pioneering works of architecture of the end of the 19th century. The stylistic revolution represented by these works is characterised by their open plan, the diffusion of light, and the brilliant joining of the curved lines of decoration with the structure of the building.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

Victor Horta was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1861 and lived for several years in Paris before returning to Belgium to work as an architect in 1880. He achieved rapid success, working on several prestigious buildings and receiving a number of official posts including a position at the Free University of Brussels.

From 1892, Horta began working in the new Art Nouveau style. In 1893, he designed the Hôtel Tassel, which is considered one of the first examples of Art Nouveau architecture (along with the Hankar House by Paul Hankar, built at the same time). He applied the same style to many subsequent buildings, including the Hôtel Solvay (built 1895–1900), the Hôtel van Eetvelde (1895–1901), and his own house and workshop (1898–1901).

UNESCO's Description

The Neolithic flint mines at Spiennes, covering more than 100 ha, are the largest and earliest concentration of ancient mines in Europe. They are also remarkable for the diversity of technological solutions used for extraction and for the fact that they are directly linked to a settlement of the same period.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

Description

Discovered in 1843, the first excavations were undertaken by the mining engineer Alphonse Briart and two others during railway construction in 1867, with results presented to the International Prehistoric Congress held in Brussels in 1872. Intermittent excavations have been carried out up to the present day.

The Mines of Spiennes cover some 100 ha (250 acres) of downland four miles south-east of the city of Mons. The site is dotted with millions of scraps of worked flint and numerous mining pits, that Neolithic settlers have gradually turned into vertical mine shafts to depths of over 10 m (33 ft). Underneath is an elaborate man-made network of caverns accessible via the many shafts.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q677879 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

The Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Tournai was built in the first half of the 12th century. It is especially distinguished by a Romanesque nave of extraordinary dimensions, a wealth of sculpture on its capitals and a transept topped by five towers, all precursors of the Gothic style. The choir, rebuilt in the 13th century, is in the pure Gothic style.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

There was a diocese centered at Tournai from the late 6th century and this structure of local blue-gray stone occupies rising ground near the south bank of the Scheldt, which divides the city of Tournai into two roughly equal parts. Begun in the 12th century on even older foundations, the building combines the work of three design periods with striking effect, the heavy and severe character of the Romanesque nave contrasting remarkably with the transitional work of the transept and the fully developed Gothic of the choir. The transept is the most distinctive part of the building, with its cluster of five bell towers and apsidal (semicircular) ends.

The nave belongs mostly to the first third of the 12th century.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q391229 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

The Plantin-Moretus Museum is a printing plant and publishing house dating from the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Situated in Antwerp, one of the three leading cities of early European printing along with Paris and Venice, it is associated with the history of the invention and spread of typography. Its name refers to the greatest printer-publisher of the second half of the 16th century: Christophe Plantin (c. 1520–89). The monument is of outstanding architectural value. It contains exhaustive evidence of the life and work of what was the most prolific printing and publishing house in Europe in the late 16th century. The building of the company, which remained in activity until 1867, contains a large collection of old printing equipment, an extensive library, invaluable archives and works of art, among them a painting by Rubens.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

Christophe Plantin, his wife Jeanne Rivière and their first daughter Margaretha moved from France to Antwerp around 1550. Plantin engaged initially in lace trading and the printing business. Due to the success of the latter business, the family moved in 1576 into the building called De Gulden Passer (The Golden Compass) where they also set up their printing press. The print type was sourced from the leading type founders of the day in Paris. The Plantin Press was a major figure in contemporary printing with interests in humanism. His eight-volume, multi-language Plantin Polyglot Bible with Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Syriac texts was one of the most complex productions of the period.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q595802 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

When banker and art collector Adolphe Stoclet commissioned this house from one of the leading architects of the Vienna Secession movement, Josef Hoffmann, in 1905, he imposed neither aesthetic nor financial restrictions on the project. The house and garden were completed in 1911 and their austere geometry marked a turning point in Art Nouveau, foreshadowing Art Deco and the Modern Movement in architecture. Stoclet House is one of the most accomplished and homogenous buildings of the Vienna Secession, and features works by Koloman Moser and Gustav Klimt, embodying the aspiration of creating a ‘total work of art' (Gesamtkunstwerk). Bearing testimony to artistic renewal in European architecture, the house retains a high level of integrity, both externally and internally as it retains most of its original fixtures and furnishings.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

The Stoclet Palace was commissioned by Adolphe Stoclet, a wealthy Belgian financier and art collector, and his wife Suzanne. The Stoclets hired the 35-year-old Austrian architect Josef Hoffmann, who was a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a radical group of designers and artists established in 1897, to build them their own mansion. Stoclet had met Hoffmann while in Vienna to oversee the construction of a railroad, and he shared his avant-garde artistic inclinations. While Stoclet initially considered building the house in Vienna, he eventually settled on a site in Brussels.

The Stoclet Palace was the first residential project for the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshops), co-founded by Hoffmann in 1903.

Description

The Stoclet Palace is located at 279–281, avenue de Tervueren/Tervurenlaan, in the Woluwe-Saint-Pierre municipality of Brussels. The building was designed to appear from the road as a stately city mansion. Seen from the garden at the back, it "becomes a villa suburbana with its rear façade sculpturally modelled by bay windows, balconies and terraces" in the words of architectural historian Annette Freytag, which gave the Stoclet family a building with "all the advantages of a comfortable urban mansion and a country house at the same time."

The integration of architects, artists, and artisans makes the Stoclet Palace an example of a Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), one of the defining characteristics of Art Nouveau.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q239028 (CC0).

UNESCO's Description

The four sites of the property form a strip 170 km long by 3–15 km wide, crossing Belgium from east to west, consisting of the best-preserved 19th- and 20th-century coal-mining sites of the country. It features examples of the utopian architecture from the early periods of the industrial era in Europe within a highly integrated, industrial and urban ensemble, notably the Grand-Hornu colliery and workers’ city designed by Bruno Renard in the first half of the 19th century. Bois-du-Luc includes numerous buildings erected from 1838 to 1909 and one of Europe’s oldest collieries dating back to the late 17th century. While Wallonia had hundreds of collieries, most have lost their infrastructure, while the four components of the listed site retain a high measure of integrity.

From the UNESCO World Heritage Centre (CC BY-SA IGO 3.0).

History

During the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, mining and the heavy industry that relied on coal formed a major part of Belgium's economy. Most of this mining and industry took place in the sillon industriel ("industrial valley" in French), a strip of land running across the country where many of the largest cities in Wallonia are located. The named locations of this World Heritage Site are all situated in or near the area of the sillon industriel.

The mining sector in Belgium declined during the 20th century during deindustrialization and today the four mines listed are no longer operational. Today, they are each open to visitors as museums and are an important part of Belgian industrial heritage.

Description

The four sites of the property form a strip that is 170km long by 3 to 15 km, crossing Belgium from east to west. It consists of the best-preserved 19th- and 20th-century coal mining sites of the country. It features early examples of the utopian architecture from the early periods of the industrial era in Europe within a highly integrated, industrial and urban ensemble, notably the Grand-Hornu colliery and workers’ city designed by Bruno Renard in the first half of the 19th century. Bois-du-Luc includes numerous buildings erected from 1838 to 1909 and one of Europe’s oldest collieries dating back to the end of the 17th century.

Key Facts

Facts from Wikidata Q1921177 (CC0).