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Within fifty years, the territory that was not much more than a place name had become one of the most important cities in Wallonia. La Louvière was recognized as an independent city in 1869. Today, La Louvière is still the fifth largest city in Wallonia, after Charleroi, Liège, Namur, and Mons.
Fifth Walloon town by its size, La Louvière takes pride in its industrial past: make the most of the canal, its folkloric traditions and its carnivals.
- Hydraulic Boat Lifts
- Strépy-Thieu Boatlift
- Canal Du Centre
- Keramis-Centre de La Ceramique
- Mining Site Bois-du-Luc
- Musée Royal de Mariemont
- Mill
- Centre de La Gravure et de L’Image imprimée
- La Louve
- Domaine de La Louve
Bestriding the Canal du Centre close to La Louvière are four century-old technological marvels that look like they might have been dreamed up by H.G. Wells. These are hydraulic boat lifts, erected between 1888 and 1917 and designed to compensate for an elevation difference of more than 66 metres along just seven kilometres of the canal. In east- to...
As we’ll see, the Canal du Centre was widened in a long-term modern project, completed in 2002. This bypassed the old boatlifts, putting all their work on the shoulders of one record-breaking megastructure. Completed in 2002 after 20 years of construction, the Strépy-Thieu Boatlift was the tallest in the world at the time, at 102 metres and serving...
More on the actual waterway, which is just over 20 kilometres and links the Meuse with the Scheldt. This piece of infrastructure had been centuries in the pipeline as a means of transporting coal, but the almost 100-metre difference in elevation between the two rivers was prohibitive until human technology could catch up at the turn of the 20th cen...
The old, listed Boch earthenware manufactory on the edge of the city centre now holds this first-rate museum dedicated to ceramics. The Boch Collection is an extraordinary assemblage of 19th and 20th-century earthenware produced by this manufactory, with pieces by master craftsmen and feted industrial designers like Charles Catteau (1880-1966) who ...
Contributing to the Major Mining Sites of Wallonia UNESCO World Heritage Site is this coalmine just outside La Louvière that shut down in the 70s. Bois-du-Luc has a history going back 1685 but it’s the activity during the 19th century and the mine’s role during the Industrial Revolution that garners so much interest. What’s really compelling is the...
The industrialist and philanthropist Raoul Warocqué (1870-1917) bequeathed his sizeable and very eclectic collection of art and antiquities to the Belgian state when he passed away during the First World War. This initially came inside Warocqué’s lavish Neoclassical mansion, which burnt down in 1960, although its contents were saved. The current bu...
La Louvière’s Neoclassical former courthouse (1900) is the repository for the city’s art collection. MiLL opened here in 1987 and was given a renovation in the 2000s, with cartoon characters helping youngsters navigate the exhibits. The museum holds the largest number of works by Romanian-born 20th-century sculptor Idel Ianchelevici (1909-1994) of ...
This museum is devoted to engraving and contemporary printed art and has put together a hefty collection spanning the second half of the 20th century to the present. There are 10,000 individual prints, some 2,000 posters and 1,000 books and portfolios by 1,640 contemporary artists from Belgium and abroad. A whole spectrum of media is represented, f...
The name La Louvière derives from the Old French word Menaulu (meigne au leu), meaning “Wolf’s Lair”, and might have something to do with the high number of wolves living in what was then forest in Medieval times. Still, a name like La Louvière fires the imagination and at some point led to a Rome-like legend of a wolf nursing a human child. So gre...
For fresh air and greenery you need only travel a couple of kilometres south-west to this well-looked after public park. A large swathe of Domaine de la Louve has been allowed to grow out, and these flowery meadows are a haven for butterflies in the summer. There are more than 80 species of trees and shrubs in the park, and if you keep your eyes pe...
La Louvière, town, Hainaut province, southwestern Belgium, on the Central Canal, about 11 miles (17 km) east of Mons. It has been a centre of coal mining since the 14th century. La Louvière is also a major centre of steel manufacturing and produces sheet metal, furniture, and ceramics.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Hydraulic lifts, mining sites, a ceramics museum... are amazing witnesses of the Industrial Era in La Louvière. Read more.
Capital of the Centre region, La Louvière, also named the Wolves city, is sure to delight those curious about history, culture and folkloric traditions. Let’s talk about its rich industrial past: the Canal du Centre, its hundred-year-old boat lift, the mining site of Bois du Luc.
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La Louvière (French pronunciation: [la lu.vjɛʁ], Walloon: El Lovire) is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut. La Louvière's municipality includes the old communes of Haine-Saint-Paul, Haine-Saint-Pierre, Saint-Vaast, Trivières, Boussoit, Houdeng-Aimeries, Houdeng-Gœgnies, Maurage, and Strépy ...
