Fort de la Chartreuse – Purgatory

History (stolen from wikipedia)

The Fort de la Chartreuse, which dominates the Amercœur neighborhood of Liège in Belgium, was built between 1817 and 1823 to defend the city.

The fort is built on a strategic height that dominates the valley of the Meuse, which had been occupied by a Carthusian (Ordre des Chartreux) monastery until the French Revolution. The fort was built by the Dutch, who at the time administered southern Belgium.

The fort was abandoned as a fortification by the military in 1891 and was thereafter used as a barracks. From 1914 to 1918 the Germans used it as a prison, and again from 1940 to 1944. In 1944-1945 it was used by the Americans as a military hospital. The Belgian army left the site in 1988.

Our Visit

After partying hard on new years eve the night before our superb tour guide and driver Christophe spent most of this visit hunched over his steering wheel asleep. Reliable Ryan ‘Intrepidus’ was powering through the hangover by continuing to drink whilst he wondered around with me keeping me company while I explored this massive site. Despite spending several hours there, we only managed to cover about 60% of the site and even then I don’t doubt we missed a lot. This place is massive there is no other way to describe it. Aside from the main buildings which seem to go on forever, there are lots of little off shoots and smaller buildings located around the edges of the grounds and some concealed areas which are now obscured by the tress and vegetation.

Highlight of this visit for me had to be the stairs in the main building pictured above, I’d seen a shot of them elsewhere from someone else’s report where they were labelled Purgatory (had to steal the name it seemed so fitting) and instantly knew I wanted to photograph them for myself :). There’s no denying the place is a wreck with most notable features having been stripped out and very little which has been left behind but the architecture and sheer size of this place made it well worth the trip! I’d definitely like to revisit this one .

Fort de la Chartreuse Liege Belgium

Fort de la Chartreuse – Purgatory

Fort de la Chartreuse Liege Belgium

If you’ve made it this far… thanks for reading / checking out the pictures. Leave me a comment below or hit the like button to let me know you’ve enjoyed the shots and to encourage me to keep posting more 🙂

Limited Edition and Canvas prints, as well as regular prints, are available for all of the images above just ask me about prices.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/Proj3ctM4yh3m

Google+: http://plus.google.com/u/1/116447183232474936433/posts

500px: http://500px.com/proj3ctm4yh3m

flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/proj3ctm4yh3m/

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/proj3ctm4yh3m

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PROJ3CTM4YH3M

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PROJ3CTM4YH3M/videos

Instagram: http://instagram.com/projectmayhemurbex

Tumblr: http://proj3ctm4yh3m.tumblr.com/

Only Mr K! says:

January 21, 2014 at 12:17 am

Some great stairs shots there with fantastic light.

PROJ3CTM4YH3M says:

January 29, 2014 at 7:56 pm

Cheers Mr K! I went pretty much just to see those stairs at this place… there was a fair bit more than I expected really a massive site but all ruins :/

Andreas Kuschel says:

April 8, 2013 at 1:23 pm

Wow. I’ll put that on my list of places to visit

April 8, 2013 at 3:21 pm

Hi Andreas,

Thanks for the comment. This place is well worth a trip, I honestly thought we would be in and out within an hour or so but the complex is so vast we ended up spending most of the day there and still missed a fair portion of the site! Best of luck mate

Proj3ct

Urbex: Fort de la Chartreuse, Liege, Belgium – January 2013

History (stolen from wikipedia)

Our Visit

Share this:

Related posts: