One of the strangest ways to discover Charleroi is to take a ride on metro line M1 or M2. Not for everyone admittedly. But the metro has a certain faded futuristic charm due to the brutalist 1960s architecture and ghostly abandoned stations.
Starting at Charleroi Sud station, you take the metro in the direction of Anderlues. It passes through several underground stations (including one decorated with scenes from Lucky Luke comics), and eventually emerges on a dramatic elevated viaduct above a network of motorways, railway lines and canals.
It is an astonishing experience, like a roller coaster ride above the city, taking you through a disturbing dystopian urban landscape of abandoned factories, cooling towers and spoil heaps. Get off at Providence station in Marchienne-au-Pont to take the next train back to Sud.
The metro was an ambitious infrastructure project conceived in a period when Charleroi was a key industrial city. But it had to be drastically scaled back as the city went into what seemed like terminal decline. It’s really not a metro system but a rather rickety tram network.
One of the lines (M5) was scrapped after the tracks had been laid and six new stations built, leaving a series of ghost stations that are now covered in graffiti. But there are now plans to open the line using a €60 million grant from the EU’s Covid recovery plan. The new line is planned to open in 2026. We’ll see if that works out.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
