Bois du Cazier

On 8 August 1956 a fire broke out underground at the Bois du Cazier colliery at Marcinelle and 262 of the 275 men below were killed, of whom 136 were Italian, part of the workforce brought to Belgium under a post-war agreement that exchanged labour for coal. The disaster changed European mining safety regulation and the terms of that agreement. The site has been kept: the headframes, the winding hall, the sorting plant and the buildings stand, with a memorial and a permanent exhibition on the disaster, alongside museums of industry and of glass, which was the other Charleroi industry. Spoil heaps behind the site have been planted and are walked. It was inscribed as one of the Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.

History

Coal mining here goes back to a concession granted by royal decree on 30 September 1822, and a transcription error turned the name Bois de Cazier into Bois du Cazier. By 1955 the mine, with shafts 765 and 1,035 metres deep, produced 170,557 tonnes of coal a year and employed 779 workers, many of them migrants from Italy and elsewhere, housed in Nissen huts in former prisoner of war camps. On 8 August 1956 a cage was set moving before a coal wagon was fully loaded, ruptured electric cables and oil pipes and started a fire underground; only 13 of the men below survived, and the 262 dead, of 12 nationalities and including 136 Italians, made it the worst mining accident in Belgian history, after which Italian immigration stopped and mine safety rules were revised across Europe. Full production resumed the next year and the mine shut in December 1967; it became a national monument on 28 May 1990, opened as a museum in 2002 and in 2012 was inscribed as one of four Walloon mining sites on the World Heritage List (Wikipedia, Bois du Cazier).

The main sights

• The 1956 memorial and exhibition - the disaster and the men who died.
• Headframes and winding hall - the surface plant kept as it was.
• The industry and glass museums - the wider Charleroi trades.
• Planted spoil heaps - the tips behind the site, now walked.

When to go

Year round. Two to three hours. Closed Mondays. The anniversary on 8 August is marked with a ceremony. It is a memorial site as well as a museum and is treated as such.

Before you go

It is a memorial to a disaster and the exhibition is heavy going, particularly the section on the individual victims. Interpretation is in French with some Italian and English. The surrounding area is post-industrial and bleak. It is out of Charleroi centre.

Nearby

Charleroi is north; the Photography Museum lies in the same city.

Key facts