Mons
The Hainaut Capital With A UNESCO Listed Baroque Belfry, The Doudou Festival (UNESCO Intangible Heritage) And, Nearby, The Neolithic Flint Mines Of Spiennes (UNESCO) · Mons, Hainaut Province
Mons (Bergen in Dutch) is the capital of Hainaut, a French-speaking hill town whose old centre climbs to a baroque belfry, finished in the 1660s and the only belfry of its style in Belgium, listed by UNESCO. Below it the Grand-Place is framed by a Gothic town hall, where a small iron monkey by the door is rubbed on the head for luck. Mons is best known for the Doudou, the Ducasse held on the weekend of Trinity Sunday: a golden carriage hauled up a steep street and the Lumecon, a fight between St George and the dragon on the Grand-Place, recognised by UNESCO as intangible heritage. The city was European Capital of Culture in 2015, and it holds the Mundaneum, an early 20th-century attempt to catalogue all knowledge; Vincent van Gogh decided to become an artist nearby at Cuesmes. In 1914 and 1918 the British army is said to have fired its first and last shots of WWI here. The honest caveat: outside the Doudou, Mons is a quiet provincial town, its museums close on Mondays and the best nearby sites need a car.
The Grand-Place and the Belfry of Mons, with the Doudou festival's Lumecon fought on the square, Mons, Hainaut Province, Belgium
The Grand-Place and the old streets are open at all hours and free. The Belfry, with its museum and lift, is usually open Tuesday to Sunday and closed on Mondays, like most Mons museums, including the Doudou Museum, BAM fine arts museum and the Mons Memorial Museum; the Mundaneum has kept its own shorter days, and the Van Gogh House at Cuesmes opens on limited days - check each schedule. The Collegiate Church of Sainte-Waudru is usually open daily, with its treasury on shorter hours. Getting there: SNCB/NMBS trains from Brussels take about 50-60 minutes, and from the station it is a 10-15 minute walk uphill to the Grand-Place; TEC buses serve the suburbs. By car, Mons sits on the E19/E42 motorways, with paid parking around the inner ring. Book hotels for the Doudou weekend months ahead, and book Spiennes mine tours well in advance, as places are limited.