Waterloo turns up heat of battle

British soldiers in a dramatisation of the Battle of Waterloo

Belgium hopes a new hi-tech visitor centre at the Waterloo battlefield will make history come to life for tourists.

The 30-million-euro (£20m) centre will include re-creations of the 1815 battle in which 16,000 soldiers died.

During the epic battle Britain's Duke of Wellington defeated the French Emperor Napoleon, changing the course of history.

The centre aims to swell visitor numbers to 500,000 annually, compared with about 300,000 currently.

Battle for tourists

The Belgian authorities are hoping the new centre will lure tourists from the US and Asia, as well as Europeans.

"Today there is a huge panorama but nothing that really explains what happened at Waterloo," said Bruno Monnier, chairman of the French firm Culture Espaces, who will create the 3,000-sq metre visitor centre.

"It will be a memorial to all those who lost their lives on the battlefield - we'll be emphasising the history of the place," he told BBC News Online.

The centre will include a film show allowing visitors to experience what it would have been like in the thick of the battle.

At the moment visitors have to use their imagination when viewing the ancient battlefield - only a pyramid-shaped hill topped with a lion stands on the sweeping farmland where the battle took place.

The new underground centre will lie beneath the battlefield, which will be opened up to tourists, allowing them to walk in the footsteps of the soldiers who fought there.

The entire project will be supervised by a multinational group of experts.

Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo drew to a close 23 years of war in Europe.