Hainaut is Belgium's southwesternmost province, a stretch of Wallonia that runs from the old industrial heartland around Charleroi down to the French border. It is not glamorous — this was coal and steel country, and the scars show — but it holds two of Belgium's most interesting cities.
Mons (Bergen in Dutch) is the provincial capital, a handsome university town with a Grand Place, a baroque belfry on the hill, and a peculiar annual festival (the Doudou) in which a mock dragon is battled through the streets. Tournai, near the French border, has one of the finest Romanesque cathedrals in Europe — five towers, enormous scale, and a UNESCO listing.
Between the cities, the landscape is flat farmland and old mining towns. The Canal du Centre has four hydraulic boat lifts from 1888, still working, still UNESCO-listed. Hainaut is not on most tourist itineraries, but the two cities alone justify a detour.