The Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is a
UNESCO World Heritage Site comprising four sites in
Wallonia in southern
Belgium associated with the Belgian
coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron fro ...
industry of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The four sites of the grouping, situated in the French-speaking
Hainaut Province and
Liège Province, comprise
Grand-Hornu
Grand-Hornu is an old industrial coal mining complex and company town (''cité ouvrière'') in Hornu (Boussu
Boussu (; pcd, Boussu-dlé-Mont) is a municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium.
As of January 1, 2006, Bou ...
, the
Bois-du-Luc, the
Bois du Cazier
The Bois du Cazier () was a coal mine in what was then the town of Marcinelle, near Charleroi, in Belgium which today is preserved as an industrial heritage site. It is best known as the location of a major mining disaster that took place on Aug ...
and
Blegny-Mine.
Description
The site was recognized by the UNESCO commission in 2012 and is officially described:
History
During the
Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, mining and the heavy industry that relied on
coal
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.
Coal is formed when dead ...
formed a major part of Belgium's economy. Most of this mining and industry took place in the ''
sillon industriel
The ''Sillon industriel'' (, "industrial furrow") is the former industrial backbone of Belgium. It runs across the region of Wallonia, passing from Dour, the region of Borinage, in the west, to Verviers in the east, passing along the way through ...
'' ("industrial valley" in French), a strip of land running across the country where many of the largest cities in Wallonia are located. The named locations of this World Heritage Site are all situated in or near the area of the ''sillon industriel''.
The mining sector in Belgium declined during the 20th century during
deindustrialization and today the four mines listed are no longer operational. Today, they are each open to visitors as museums and are an important part of Belgian
industrial heritage
Industrial heritage refers to the physical remains of the history of technology and industry, such as manufacturing and mining sites, as well as power and transportation infrastructure. Another definition expands this scope so that the term a ...
.
Sites
See also
*
Belgium in "the long nineteenth century"
In the history of Belgium, the period from 1789 to 1914, dubbed the "long 19th century" by the historian Eric Hobsbawm, includes the end of Austrian rule and periods of French and Dutch occupation of the region, leading to the creation of the ...
*
Industrial archaeology
*
References
Further reading
*
{{World Heritage Sites in Belgium
World Heritage Sites in Belgium
Industrial history of Belgium
Walloon culture