Explore Waterloo

Why visit Waterloo

Waterloo is a name that did more than 200 years of work for the English language, but the village itself is small and surprisingly contemplative. The battlefield south of town has been preserved more or less as it was, with a few essential markers added. The Butte du Lion — a 41-metre artificial mound topped by a cast-iron lion — was built in 1826 by the Dutch on the spot where Prince William of Orange was wounded; climb its 226 steps for the full panorama of the killing fields. At the foot of the mound, the Memorial 1815 museum runs a strong multimedia experience, with the 110-metre circular Panorama painting of the battle by Louis Dumoulin (1912) and the Hougoumont Farm a short walk away — the fortified farmhouse where some of the most desperate fighting happened, restored as a moving Allied memorial. In the town proper, the Wellington Museum occupies the inn where the Duke wrote his victory dispatch the morning after; Napoleon's Last Headquarters at Le Caillou is the counter-piece a few kilometres south. Visit on the third weekend of June if you can stomach the 2,000-strong battle reenactment.