Black Cokes (BE) – A desolate industrial site near the river Sambre

Once prosperous and influential due to mining and steel industry, now a city that looks gloomy and blows the last smoke out of the chimney of the remaining steel works.

Here, at Europe’s ugliest city, the biggest mining disaster in Belgian history took place, killing 262 miners in a horrible way. It meant the end of mining and the steel industry also shriveled.
Today we see desolate industrial sites along the banks of the river Sambre with abandoned buildings and sad remnants of the once so rich industry.
A beautiful place, perhaps depressing but great for the urbex-photography and together with my son I wandered around here for hours!