Turnhout Things to Do

If you come outside the Beguinage you go to the right into the Begijnenstraat. On your left you will see the Taxandria museum. This museum takes you through a thousand years of history. Turnhout and the Kempen area are illustrated from prehistoric times up to the present. There are many finds, notable relics, important collections of coins, lace work, furniture, devotionally, archaeology, paintings and lots more of valuable objects to be found.
The museum is housed in the beautiful restored "Huis metten Thoren"...

My bf and I lived in Netherlands but we always love to trave to Turnhout to visit Utopolis for watching our favorite movie flicks. In the Netherlands we do have cinemas although the not nice part is that they have what they call "pauze"or break in English. its in the middle of the movie and its annoying for us so we always go to Belgium for movies.

Its a nice place and the ticket price every Monday is only 5 euros for any movie

Reaching Turnhout by car is entering from the road E34 motorway.It will be difficult as from now till middle 2005 because the government is rebuilding the trafic policy and structure - so many roads are blocked.
The first monument you will see is this old "Watertoren" - if it is still properly working - i do not know - but anyway - the gate to the Warande Park - center of cultural life in Turnhout.
By the way - the central train station in Turnhout is also a monument - worthed to visit !

After the walk you might get interested in a look in the world of playing cards. In Turnhout is the National Museum of Playing Cards and this is one of the few in it's kind in the world as well. Basis is of course the Turnhout grafical-paper industry that exports playing cards all over the world for about one century now (Carta Mundi).
The museum shows the history of the playing cards and the games played with them all around the world. Furthermore one shows how now-a-days the cards are made and the museum houses an amazing collection of playing cards throughout the centuries in a dazzling amount of forms shapes, colours, prints and pictures.

This large brickstone church is quite modern, though one wouldn't say that. It was built only in 1903 and has a 92 meters high tower (reaching higher then the Saint Pieter on the "Grote Markt". Remarkable too are the wonderful glass in lead windows (best seen from indoors.
Like many already mentioned more modern "classics", this building was also designed by P.J. Taeymans. He was in the last part of the 19th and first decades of the 20st century, responsible for many works in the Turnhout centre.

In the Warandestraat a tower rises up. This is a watertower, in the 19th and 20st century used to get pressure on the new water pipe system in modernised towns and villages. It amazes me somehow to find out that here in Turnhout stands the only remaining watertower in the whole of Flanders, while these buildings have been numerous around the first decades of last centure. It has been assigned a state-monument and is fully restored in the (19) eighties.

Turnhout, like many towns in this neighborhood on both sides of the Dutch Belgian border, tried hard to get certain industries settled in their neighborhoods. In these parts textile, shoe, tabacco and - especially for Turnhout - paper / grafical industry came in. The first mentioned however all got competed away in the 20st century by low-cost countries far far away. Leaving the heritage of industrial architecture everywhere to be seen in and around Turnhout.

When we follow the castledreef along the schools, we suddenly go left into the "Wezenstraat". "Wezen" means "Orphins" in Dutch and we will notice why when we stand in front of the old orphinage. This monumental building deserves a better place in the list of Turnhout's heritage. It is pressed away behind the ugly monstrous buildings of some officeblocks and the modern cultural centre Warande. The old orphinage only recently got the status of monument and is now restored in the grace it once should have had. The front facade is already a beautiful sight for visitors eyes.