Lifts on the old Canal du Centre, Industrial heritage site in La Louvière, Belgium.

The lifts on the old Canal du Centre are four hydraulic boat lifts on a 7 km stretch of the canal between Houdeng-Goegnies and Thieu, in La Louvière and Le Rœulx, Belgium. Each lift has two steel troughs, 43 m long, 5.8 m wide and 3.15 m high, resting on water-filled cylinders sunk deep underground. The troughs move in opposite directions, the descending one forcing water into the other's cylinder to raise it. Tall open steel frameworks with diagonal bracing guide the troughs; a brick machine building stands beside each lift.

The first lift, at Houdeng-Gœgnies, opened in 1888 when the mining industry in the Borinage basin needed faster ways to move coal and heavy goods across the land. The three remaining lifts were added over the following years, and the system remained in use for heavy freight until the modern Strépy-Thieu lift replaced it in 2002.

The four lifts form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the canal is now used only by pleasure craft since freight was diverted to the Strépy-Thieu lift in 2002. Each lift has a machine building housing hydraulic accumulators that maintain pressure for the lifting doors and water valves. The site is in Hainaut province, between the Meuse and Scheldt basins.

The site is generally open from April through October, when the lifts are in operation and easiest to see in action. A boat trip through the troughs offers the closest view of how the mechanism works, but walking along the canal banks also gives a clear sense of the scale.

Of the eight similar lifts ever built around the world, these four in Wallonia are the only ones still standing and working. The engineering principle behind them is so well balanced that almost no extra energy is needed to raise a loaded boat.