3 Best Sights in Mons, Western Wallonia

Around 12 km (7½ miles) east of Mons, the Borinage yields one of its grandest visions. Many of the industrialists of the late-18th and 19th centuries built accommodation for their workers. These were typically squalid, pragmatic affairs, but the Grand-Hornu was different. It was the dream child of the French industrialist Henri de Gorge (1774–1832), who created a vast neoclassical hub for his workers in 1810. Its 450 homes were spacious, had hot water, and the facilities were plentiful. Workers had access to a school, clinic, dance hall, and library. In 1829, some 2,500 people lived here, but by 1954, the local mines had closed and the site was abandoned. It has since been restored and is now home to an acclaimed contemporary art museum, yet it's worth visiting just to see the grounds, encircled by redbrick arches like some industrial colosseum. This remains a curious anachronism, out of step with what was mostly a dehumanizing era for workers, and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2012.

The city's premier art gallery is a blank slate: all white walls and glass. It was only built in 2015, when it opened with a retrospective on Van Gogh in the Borinage. Since then, temporary exhibitions tend to have only loose connections to the region and have ranged from the photography of Dave LaChapelle to the distorted paintings of Colombian artist Fernando Botero. 

One of the true gems of the city is also one of the few private museums, its collection assembled across a span of 50 years by a Belgian lawyer, François Duesberg, and his late wife. It focuses on two eras of French design, spanning 1775 to 1825, and delves particularly into the art movement known as "Empire," which grew in the early 19th century. It spawned some incredible objets d'art, which would have been the envy of high society at the time.