Mons and Tournai

Mons and Tournai are in Hainaut, the province in the west of Wallonia, the part of Belgium where French is spoken. Both are about an hour by train from Brussels and roughly 50 km from each other, which makes it possible to see both on the same trip, by train or by car.

Mons, the provincial capital, has a Grand-Place surrounded by cafés, the only Baroque beffroi in Belgium, and the Collégiale Sainte-Waudru, from which the Car d'Or procession departs each year during the Doudou festival. Around the town are traces of the Borinage, the old coal basin: the house where Vincent van Gogh lived in Cuesmes, the mining complex of the Grand-Hornu and, much earlier, the flint mines of Spiennes, dug around 6,000 years ago.

Tournai is one of the oldest cities in the country. It was the capital of the Franks in the 5th century, and Clovis was born there. The cathedral of Notre-Dame, with five towers in a row, combines a Romanesque nave and a Gothic choir. Next to it, the beffroi from the late 12th century is the oldest in Belgium. On the banks of the Escalda, the Pont des Trous is a fortified 13th-century gate that still crosses the river.

Museums also carry weight in a visit: the Mundaneum, the paper archive that tried to classify all the world's knowledge, the BAM and the Mons Memorial Museum in Mons; the Musée des Beaux-Arts designed by Victor Horta and the tapestry museum in Tournai. Half an hour from Mons, the Pairi Daiza zoo occupies the grounds of a former Cistercian abbey in Brugelette.

This destination brings together 2 cities: Mons, Tournai.