8 notable places within an hour's drive.
landmark
Pairi Daiza
Belgium's most-visited attraction: a 75-hectare animal park built around a former Cistercian abbey in Hainaut, with full-scale Chinese, Indonesian and Middle Kingdom gardens housing giant pandas, gorillas and elephants.
28 km · about 35 min drive
landmark
Vieux Lille
Lively old quarter of Flemish brick gables and grand squares, the cultural capital of the French north.
31 km · about 35 min drive
landmark
Strépy-Thieu Boat Lift
A colossal 73 m boat elevator on the Canal du Centre, among the tallest in the world, hoisting entire barges in a concrete cathedral visible for miles across Hainaut.
46 km · about 55 min drive
landmark
Canal du Centre Hydraulic Boat Lifts
Four UNESCO-listed 19th-century hydraulic boat lifts near La Louvière, still standing on the old Canal du Centre.
48 km · about 55 min drive
museum
In Flanders Fields Museum
Set in Ypres' rebuilt Cloth Hall, this museum tells the harrowing story of the WWI Western Front trenches.
51 km · about 60 min drive
landmark
Menin Gate
A vast memorial arch bearing 54,000 names of the missing, where the Last Post sounds every evening at eight.
51 km · about 60 min drive
museum
Louvre-Lens
A luminous glass-and-steel satellite of the Louvre rising from a former coal-mining town.
52 km · about 60 min drive
landmark
Ghent
Vibrant medieval Flemish city with stunning canal-side architecture, the Gravensteen castle, and the famous Ghent Altarpiece.
54 km · about 60 min drive