Gallery
Our business
Open every day
from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM
from July 1st to August 31st
Closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in July
We kindly ask our guests to make a reservation in advance using the reservation system below.
The Leuven Canal, also known as the Leuven–Dyle channel, was dug from 1750 to 1753 under a charter from Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, mainly to supply the breweries of Leuven with raw materials. The Leuven city council had lobbied for more than two centuries for a connection to the sea to promote its trade. The canal is one of the oldest man-made waterways in Belgium.
Café Zennegat—built together with the locks and lock house in 1750—is the only remaining business of the hamlet of Zennegat, once a busy stopover for inland skippers, river pilots and towboat crews.
It was also popular with day-trippers. "Eel in green" was the regional speciality and thirst could be quenched in no fewer than nine inns. In addition to his ferry service and café, Polleke the ferryman also ran a grocery store and there was even a shop selling fabrics and knitting supplies for skippers’ wives.
In the late sixties the Mechelen fish market and the Haverwerf were taken over by hippies and a few years later the rebellious crowd also settled at the Zennegat. As if those so-called long-haired layabouts had anything to do with water. The local and elderly resident Sander certainly had no complaints and feasted his eyes on the power flower girls who came to swim naked at the lock. “Those girls sure showed some breasts!” The locks of the Zennegat became, without a doubt, the gates to his heaven on earth.
Rik Wouters (1882–1916), the world-famous Belgian Fauvist, also loved to linger and sketch here. The café lives on in two of his etchings.
Open daily
from 11 am to 10 pm
from 1 July to 31 August
Closed on Tuesdays & Wednesdays in July
Today you can also rent kayaks with us. For more information or reservations contact us on 015422813, at the bar or via the reservation system, mentioning that it is for kayak rental instead of a table reservation.
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You drive into Hogeweg at the Battel complex. Follow Hogeweg to the Zennegat canal and continue to the Zennegat lock. Park your car there as usual (not in front of the houses) and take the pedestrian bridge into paradise.
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