11 May/04
Filed under: Belgium, Travel Features at 10:38 PM
Belgian authorities on Monday unveiled plans for a multi-million-euro facelift for the site of the Battle of Waterloo to draw more tourists from around the globe.
The project includes an underground multi-media visitor center at the heart of a renovated layout for the venue of the 1815 battle, which saw Britain\'s Duke of Wellington consign French Emperor Napoleon to history.
Currently the battlefield, 30 minutes\' drive south of Brussels, draws some 300,000 visitors a year to a site dominated by a pyramid-like hillock topped by a huge lion overseeing the surrounding farmland.
\"We want to go to 500,000,\" Serge Kubla, economy minister for the French-speaking Wallonia region of southern Belgium, saying it is particularly targeting tourists from Asia and North America.
Waterloo wants to be enshrined on the list of sites added to the typical European tourist route.