Zoniënwoud
Ancient beech-and-oak woodland with soaring, arrow-straight trunks forming a cathedral-like canopy.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Zoniёnwoud in Brussels traces the forest's damage across centuries: twenty-two thousand oaks Napoleon ordered felled for an invasion fleet that never sailed, further clearing under the Dutch king who followed him, and a banking company that bought and stripped huge stretches for farmland in the 1820s, pushing out the last wolves around 1810. Before the Duke of Brabant's hunting grounds and the wars that followed, it also reaches back to foresters working under Austrian rule, whose choices still shape what rises above you today. Look up at how far the trunks climb before the first branch appears.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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