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.
6 km · about 10 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.
15 km · about 30 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.
18 km · about 20 min drive
natural wonder
Hallerbos
The 'Blue Forest' near Halle carpets itself with millions of wild bluebells under beech trees each spring.
31 km · about 35 min drive
racetrack
Nivelles-Baulers
A flat, fast circuit that hosted two Belgian Grands Prix in the 1970s before closing in 1981. Much of the abandoned track survives among industrial development, its wide sweeping curves clearly readable from ground level.
31 km · about 35 min drive
landmark
Lion's Mound Waterloo
A grass pyramid topped by a cast-iron lion marks the 1815 battlefield where Napoleon met his final defeat.
39 km · about 45 min drive
ancient ruins
Villers Abbey
The vast romantic ruins of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey, roofless Gothic arches lost in woodland near Brussels.
45 km · about 50 min drive
museum
Villa Empain
Baron Empain's 1934 marble-and-gilt Art Deco mansion on Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, restored by the Boghossian Foundation as an East-West art centre: Brussels' most sumptuous interior after the Horta houses.
45 km · about 50 min drive