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.
29 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.
36 km · about 40 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.
39 km · about 45 min drive
landmark
Vieux Lille
Lively old quarter of Flemish brick gables and grand squares, the cultural capital of the French north.
49 km · about 55 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.
56 km · about 65 min drive
natural wonder
Hallerbos
The 'Blue Forest' near Halle carpets itself with millions of wild bluebells under beech trees each spring.
57 km · about 65 min drive
museum
Louvre-Lens
A luminous glass-and-steel satellite of the Louvre rising from a former coal-mining town.
58 km · about 65 min drive
historic highway
Chimay Street Circuit
A Belgian village street circuit running since 1926, still used for historic car and motorcycle racing on closed public roads. Between meetings you can drive the whole flat-out 4km lap through farmland and the town outskirts.
59 km · about 70 min drive