Abandoned Cooling Tower IM in Charleroi: Belgium’s Most Famous Urbex
Before arriving in Belgium, I used to live in Budapest (HU). There, you can find a lot of remains from the Communist period. This means there are many abandoned places to discover and explore… That is where my passion for urbex (urban exploration) began.
This was the first time I felt this mix of excitation and fear. Obviously, you are not supposed to go there, but do you know how good it feels to see places that most people will never see? I love feeling this uniqueness — as long as it remains kind of safe. The cooling tower is sometimes open for private visits.
That is why — as soon as I arrived in Belgium — I started looking for cool abandoned places to see near Brussels. It turns out that Belgium is one of the most interesting places for urbex! There are tons of unseen places to discover. The abandoned cooling tower near Charleroi is one of the most famous.
Preparing
As soon as I saw the first pictures of the cooling tower, I was immediately impressed by the hugeness of the building. Even if it is not used anymore (it used to represent 10% of Belgian CO2 emissions before it was closed in 2007!), you can feel life is still present there. As rain is still falling inside the big funnel, a lot of vegetation has grown which is kind of reassuring.
There are lot of articles about the abandoned power plant on the Internet. You can find plenty of information about it — such as the fact that it was built in 1921, almost a century ago! You can see videos and anticipate how your visit is going to be.
Discovering
After a train trip of 45 minutes from Brussels, we arrived in the city of Marchienne-au-Pont. We thought the cooling tower would be quite close to the train station but when we saw the top of it, we realized we would have to walk a little to access it. But, no reward without efforts right? As we were walking (it was my first couple urbex haha!), we were getting more excited about the place. We were also wondering if we could enter it easily.
I will not tell you if it was easy or not — I do not want to spoil you! We did not know what to expect, so we were suspicious as we entered the area… until we actually met other people going there! It removed a bit of the mystery but gave us more confidence to enter the building.
As soon as we opened the door, we were speechless in front of the greatness of the place. There was a touching light well that enhances the beauty of the circular place. We enjoyed it quite much and were very grateful to be there. We did not stay there that long as we never know who we might encounter… But we got out of the place with a big smile on the face.
Realizing
As for every urban exploration you can do, you always go out of it feeling euphoric. Well, at least this is my case. I have always loved discovering amazing spots — especially when I do not know a lot of people that already went there. I love doing some effort to be able to see a memorable building or landscape.
Even if the return trip took us almost 2 hours, I did not regret 1 second having been there. I felt this was not a missed day because we motivated ourselves to do something we wanted to do instead of postponing it. Yet, I want to remind you that urbex can be a dangerous activity and you have to be careful about what you are doing.
Tell me about your most memorable urbex! 🧗
