Parc de Mariemont

Morlanwelz, Belgium, Belgium

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The Parc de Mariemont is a large, 45‑hectare public landscape park in Morlanwelz (between Mons and Charleroi), part of the Domaine de Mariemont that also includes the Royal Museum of Mariemont, wooded forest areas and orchards.

Its origins go back to a 16th‑century royal hunting lodge and estate, known as the “Mariemont” domain, which became a Habsburg royal residence and hunting ground for the governors of the Habsburg Netherlands, and later passed into the hands of the Warocqué industrial family, whose member Nicolas Warocqué created the splendid double avenue of beeches (the “drève”) that leads to the main entrance.

In the 19th century, architect Charles‑Henri Petersen redesigned the park in the English landscape style, designing it as both a pleasure park and a dendrological collection, with ponds, cascades, fountains, romantically ruined structures, monumental statues and a rich arboretum that now holds about 50 classified trees and many exotic species, making it the most important dendrological collection in the province of Hainaut.

Today the park is a protected exceptional heritage site of Wallonia, a reserve for birds and a “green lung” for biodiversity, freely open every day from early morning to evening, with the Royal Museum of Mariemont at its centre, displaying archaeology and art from the Warocqué collections, while vehicles and bicycles are generally banned inside the domain except for service needs and dogs are not admitted to protect the wildlife.