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.
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.
34 km · about 40 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
Ghent
Vibrant medieval Flemish city with stunning canal-side architecture, the Gravensteen castle, and the famous Ghent Altarpiece.
37 km · about 45 min drive
cathedral
Saint Bavo's Cathedral Ghent
This Gothic cathedral guards the Van Eyck brothers' luminous Ghent Altarpiece, a landmark of European painting.
37 km · about 45 min drive
castle
Gravensteen
A grim moated stone castle of the Counts of Flanders rising straight from the canals in the centre of Ghent.
38 km · about 45 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
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.
42 km · about 50 min drive