The Grand-Hornu

Design, applied arts, and contemporary art

An old coal mine considered the jewel of Belgian industrial heritage, a structure dedicated to design and applied arts, a contemporary art museum... all in one location! Just a few kilometers from Mons, the Grand-Hornu invites you to explore.

A cathedral of industry

Visitors will not leave unaffected after touring the Grand-Hornu. As soon as you pass through the gates, a 10,000 square meter site unfolds before you. The buildings of the old coal mine impress with their size and unity. This monumental neoclassical ensemble, built in the 19th century, houses one of the oldest workers' neighborhoods in the world. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, it takes visitors back to its founder, Henri De Gorge, an industrial leader and true visionary. In the small town of Hornu, this man envisioned an ideal city in 1810, where workers found unprecedented comfort for their time. He had a village of 450 spacious houses built, each with hot water and a garden. Then a school, a library, a dance hall, shops, and a dispensary were also built...

From industry to design

Henri De Gorge dedicated his life to innovation. He developed new extraction techniques himself and worked with steam engines at the cutting edge of modernity. After the mine closed in 1954, the site fell into obscurity, but in the 1990s, it was revitalized. The square courtyard with the old stables, as well as the huge oval courtyard with the engineers' houses and the machine hall, are still there, ready to tell their story. But don’t expect to visit a mining museum. To remain true to its founder's vision, the Grand-Hornu turned its focus to the future early on. Since the early 1990s, it has been home to Grand-Hornu Images, a museum that offers exhibitions focused on design and applied arts. Showing design at that time might have seemed ahead of its time, even a little crazy, but today, Grand-Hornu Images has become a true reference in this field in Europe.

The MACS

A contemporary art museum

The former engineers' building, renovated by architect Pierre Hebbelinck, also houses the collections of MACS, the contemporary art museum of the French Community of Belgium. Place, poetry, and memory are the three founding themes of the MACS, which gathers nearly 300 works from 150 Belgian and international artists. The idea behind this museum is not to show masterpieces by the great masters of contemporary art, but rather to regularly present current major trends while maintaining an intimate connection with the site.