Wortel Kolonie

Wortel-Kolonie is a former charity colony and vagrant settlement located in the village of Wortel, part of the municipality of Hoogstraten in the Belgian province of Antwerp. Since 2021 it has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List — not as a single monument, but as a cultural landscape, the first of its kind in Belgium.

How was the colony in Wortel founded?

The site's history begins in 1822, when the Dutch general Johannes van den Bosch, founder of the Society of Charity (Maatschappij van Weldadigheid), established here the fifth of a series of charity colonies. At the time, present-day Belgium was still part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Having returned from the Dutch East Indies, van den Bosch wanted to test in his own country an idealistic social experiment: fighting poverty through agricultural labor while imposing order on people living on the margins of society.

The first families settled in the colony in 1823. Poor families were allowed to live there on condition that they cultivate the barren heathland. Newcomers received household goods, building tools, and clothing — but these were not gifts, they were advances that had to be repaid through the colonists' own labor. Roads were built, farmhouses constructed, and heath cleared and made fertile.

Why did the project fail?

Poor soil quality, combined with a lack of proper agricultural supervision and guidance, meant the colony never flourished as planned. The Belgian Revolution of 1830 accelerated its depopulation, and the charitable project was ultimately halted in 1842.

How did Wortel become a vagrant colony?

The site's fate changed in the following decades. In 1866, a law was introduced requiring beggars to remain at the state's disposal after serving their sentence. As a result, in 1870 — forty years after Belgian independence — the Belgian state purchased the land and converted the former free colony into an unfree, state-run colony. From 1881 new buildings were erected, and from 1891 to 1993 vagrants and beggars sent by the authorities resided there. This system remained in place until Belgium abolished its vagrancy law in 1993, finally closing this chapter of Wortel-Kolonie's history.

What can visitors see at Wortel-Kolonie today?

Today the former colony is a vast cultural landscape: former farmsteads, administrative and residential buildings dating from the late 19th century, a network of roads, and the surrounding farmland and forest shaped by the labor of generations of colonists and forcibly settled residents. It is precisely this combination of social history, architecture, and a human-shaped landscape that led to the site's inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021, as evidence of an exceptional, large-scale social experiment in poverty reduction through agricultural colonies established in remote areas.

Frequently asked questions

What was the Maatschappij van Weldadigheid? It was the Society of Charity founded by Johannes van den Bosch, which in the 19th century established agricultural colonies intended to combat poverty through farm labor.

Since when has Wortel-Kolonie been on the UNESCO list? Since 2021, as a cultural landscape — the first such listing in Belgium.

Until when did the vagrant colony at Wortel operate? People sent there by the authorities lived at the site from 1891 to 1993, when Belgium abolished its vagrancy law.