Cycle Route La Transwallone

Solre-sur-Sambre Castle (French: Château de Solre-sur-Sambre) is a castle in Solre-sur-Sambre in the municipality of Erquelinnes , province of Hainaut, Belgium.

The castle was built around the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries and retains much of the medieval structure. It is the property of the Princes de Merode.

From 01/04 to 30/09: from 10h to 12h, 13h to 18h
From 01/10 to 31/03: from 10h to 12h, 13h to 17h
Closed on: November 1st, November 11th, December 25th, January 1st and Monday of St Roch

Thuin is a small, partly hilltop town south-west of Charleroi in the Belgian province of Hainaut on the river Sambre. For rail fans, there is the ASVi museum featuring historic trams from the Vicinal era.

The municipality of Thuin (roughly pronounced TWAYNg) consists of the lower town (ville basse) and the upper town (ville-haute) plus a number of surrounding villages and the country-side in between. Lobbes is a nearby independent municipality. In the centre of Thuin, buildings in the upper town are generally older than those in the lower town. 

See

• ⊙Belfry (Beffroi) (in the main square). The belfry, dating from the 17th century, has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A splendid view on the Thuin area can be seen from the top. If you don't feel like climbing the Belfry, you can still get a good view from Place du Chapitre, the square beside the Belfry.
• ⊙North Wall (Rempart du Nord). The medieval wall offers a good view of the Sambre Valley. On the wall, next to Place du Chapitre, an old cannon nicknamed Le Spantôle can be seen.
• ⊙Grand-Rue. There are a number of older buildings along this narrow street in the upper town.
• ⊙Hanging Gardens (Jardins suspendus). The charming Hanging Gardens on the southern flank of the Thuin hill can be visited on foot, following a path enhanced by several explanation signs.
• ⊙Notre-Dame d'El Vaulx. In this church in the lower town there is a 12th-century oak statue of sedes sapientiae (our lady of wisdom). There is a vaulted passageway under the choir.
• ⊙Tram Museum (ASVi museum), Rue du Fosteau 2A, ☎ +32 71 370005. Open only certain days of the week from April to October.
  Tram operation (circulations) is generally only on Sundays plus Saturdays in July and August. Specializing in the history of the Belgian Vicinal tramway system. This includes a museum tramway with 3 routes. One route runs through the streets of the lower town to Place de la Ville-Basse. A second route runs to the nearby town of Lobbes. Until 1983, both of these routes were part of a much longer route used by electric trams that extended to Anderlues and Charleroi . The museum created a new route for diesel trams by converting a few kilometers of a former standard gauge railway line to metric gauge. (updated Aug 2019)
• ⊙House of Printing (Maison de l'imprimerie), Rue Verte 1B. Open from Tuesday to Friday from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 17:00; open on Saturday from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 12:30 to 16:00.
  The museum houses a collection of printing tools. There are demonstrations of production of paper, manual typesetting and printing. (updated Aug 2019)

Aulne Abbey was a Cistercian monastery between Thuin and Landelies on the Sambre in the Bishopric of Liège in Belgium.

History

Originally it was a Benedictine monastery, founded by Saint Landelinus about 637. Before 974 the Benedictines were replaced by secular clerics leading a common life, who, however, embraced the Rule of St. Augustine in 1144.

At the instance of Henry de Leyen, Bishop of Liège, it came into the hands of Cistercian monks from Clairvaux in 1147, under Franco de Morvaux as its first Cistercian abbot. From that time onwards it flourished as a Cistercian monastery.

The French burned it at the end of the 18th century, only a short time after it had been rebuilt on a larger scale. The library, which contained 40,000 books and 5,000 manuscripts, was also destroyed.