Bokrijk

Bokrijk is a park and museum complex close to Genk inside the Province of Limburg, Belgium. It is thought for its open-air museum which displays a huge series of ancient buildings from across Flanders, providing the history of rural existence in Belgium. The domain is five.5 square kilometres in region and hosts an critical botanical lawn and Flanders' biggest open-air playground. On March nine, 1252 Arnold IV, Count of Loon and Chiny sold a forest, that turned into located between gift Genk, Zonhoven and Hasselt, to the abbey of Herkenrode. This wooded area turned into known as 'Buscurake' or Buksenrake.

The name later advanced into 'Bouchreyck' and in the end to Bokrijk. The Cistercian abbey of Herkenrode built a grangiae, dug out fish ponds and started out forestry practices. The abbey farm turned into cultivated via lay brothers and from 1447 onwards functioned as an everyday tenant farm. It remained the abbey's property till the years of the French Revolutionary Wars. In 1797 French Revolutionaries seized all residences of the Cistercian abbey and the same year sold it to a private investor from Maastricht.