Genk's two main attractions sit at opposite ends of the city's experience: C-Mine, the transformed colliery complex in the center, and the Bokrijk Open Air Museum on the eastern edge. Both are substantial and worth a full visit rather than a brief stop.
C-Mine occupies the headframes and machine halls of the former Waterschei colliery, converted into a cultural complex with a cinema, design school, exhibition spaces, and a rooftop viewing platform. The transformation preserves enough of the industrial texture to feel authentic — the rusted machinery, the scale of the winding towers — while giving the space genuine contemporary life.
Bokrijk, about 5 km east, is one of Belgium's largest attractions: an open-air museum of reconstructed Flemish architecture gathered from across the country, spanning five centuries of rural and urban life. The collection includes farmhouses, a windmill, workshops, and a recreated town square, all properly staffed and explained. Allow a full afternoon.
The Sundial Park and the cycling-through-water path (Fietsen door het Water) are lighter attractions — pleasant rather than essential, but the underwater cycling path is one of those things that's genuinely unusual and worth doing if you're cycling through the Kempen.