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A Three Kings' Day cake and the paper crown for whoever finds the bean in their slice - © Wikimedia Commons

Epiphany Cake

Ever since the Middle Ages, parents and bakers in Flanders have been baking a special cake for the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, hiding a dried bean inside it. Whoever finds the bean in their piece of cake is crowned king or queen for a day. He or she receives a paper crown

Be-MINE in Beringen. The former mining buildings have been given a completely new purpose - Visit Limburg

MySite Beringen

At the Be-MINE mining site in Beringen, you’re more likely to encounter divers, climbers, and mountain bikers than miners these days. Yet the place still exudes the atmosphere of its industrial mining past. Like the other mines in Limburg, the Beringen mine has left a lasting mark on the region. Visit be-

The Zimmertoren in Lier with its astronomical clock - Wikimedia Commons, photo by Benoit Brummer

Tower Clocks of Lier

The city of Lier in the province of Antwerp boasts not one, but two remarkable timepieces. The Church of St. Gummarus is home to one of the oldest wrought-iron tower clocks in Europe. It was purchased in Maastricht in 1702 and, according to recent research, dates back to 1395. But Lier is also known for

Geert Bourgeois, Flemish Minister of Integration, at the El Fath Mosque, 2012 - © Belga

The El Fath Mosque in Ghent

Anyone who leaves their native region and settles elsewhere always brings their cultural and religious customs with them. As early as the interwar period, people from North Africa and Turkey came to Belgium to work in the mines, but their numbers increased dramatically, especially starting in the 1960s. With them

The sundial at the Church of Our Lady in Huldenberg - © Wikimedia Commons, photo by Wouter Hagens

The Largest Sundial in Flanders

In the old days, if you wanted to know what time it was, it was best to look up at the sky first. At exactly noon, the sun is in the south, at its highest point of the day. It is then directly above the meridian of the place where you are standing. The meridian is

First housing project in Winterslag - Immovable Heritage Agency - beeldbank.onroerenderfgoed.be, photo by Evert Vandeweghe

My Cités

When coal mining began in Central Limburg shortly after 1900, the region was sparsely populated and largely undeveloped. The newly established mining companies therefore had to build entirely new residential neighborhoods to house their future workforce. Workers’ neighborhoods had a dubious reputation at that time. Business leaders and politicians did not want unhygienic ghettos’

Portrait of Adolphe Quetelet, astronomer, mathematician, and statistician (1796–1874) – Ghent University Archives – Photo by Ghemar, Brussels

Quetelet's meridian lines

In 1835, the first train on the European mainland departed from Brussels for Mechelen. But who was going to keep track of the schedule? At that time, the time in Belgian cities was still calculated locally based on the sun, and could vary by as much as half an hour from one city to another. You could literally