Place:Vlaams-Brabant, Vlaanderen, Belgium

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Flemish Brabant is a province of Flanders, one of the three regions of Belgium. It borders on (clockwise from the North) the Belgian provinces of Antwerp, Limburg, Liège, Walloon Brabant, Hainaut and East Flanders. Flemish Brabant also surrounds the Brussels-Capital Region. Its capital is Leuven. It has an area of which is divided into two administrative districts (arrondissementen in Dutch) containing 65 municipalities. As of January 2019, Flemish Brabant has a population of 1,146,175.^[1]

Flemish Brabant was created in 1995 by the splitting of the former province of Brabant into three parts: two new provinces, Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant; and the Brussels-Capital Region, which no longer belongs to any province. The split was made to accommodate the eventual division of Belgium in three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and the Brussels-Capital Region).

The province is made up of two arrondissements. The Halle-Vilvoorde Arrondissement has Brussels in its middle and is therefore mainly a residential area, even though it also has large industrial zones and contains Belgium's main airport. The other arrondissement is the Leuven Arrondissement, centered on Leuven. The province's products include Belgian beers.

The official language in Flemish Brabant is Dutch (as it is in the whole of Flanders), but a few municipalities are to a certain extent allowed to use French to communicate with their citizens; these are called the municipalities with language facilities. Other such special municipalities can be found along the border between Flanders and Wallonia, and between Wallonia and the German-speaking area of Belgium. Halle-Vilvoorde mostly surrounds Brussels, which is officially bilingual but whose inhabitants mostly speak French.

Research Tips