Mons: The Beguinage

The capital of Hainaut, entrenched for nearly six hundred years behind its fortifications, Mons had to wait for their dismantling in 1861 to catch up with the times. The first urban projects were intelligently integrated into existing buildings, and the interwar period, marked by the crisis of the 1930s, changed things little. It would be different with the Second World War and reconstruction. At the end of the 1960s, the city was one of the first to oppose this destructive urban planning and developed a renovation policy which today made it a European benchmark. In the Beguinage district which, with its immense religious, military and hospital buildings, entered the 20^th century without too much damage, today we discover the layers of the past: a small Gothic chapel of the beguines of Sainte-Waudru, the house of Louise de Bouzanton, an austere royal military hospital, Piranesian casemates, immense 19^th century hospices, Art Nouveau shower baths, and an neo-Egyptian Masonic lodge. This book presents a moving walk through a miraculously preserved history.

19.5 x 24 cm

128 pages

100 black and white and color illustrations

ISBN: 978-2-9092-8340-1

Text in French only