The Lion's Mound, or Butte du Lion, rises over the Waterloo battlefield in Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium. King William I ordered it in 1820 to mark where Prince William of Orange was wounded on June 18, 1815. The royal architect Charles Vander Straeten designed it, and building ran from 1823 to 1826.
The mound is 141 feet (43 meters) high and 554 feet (169 meters) wide. It holds 300,000 cubic meters of earth taken from the ridge at the center of the British line. Jean-Louis Van Geel sculpted the lion, a 14.6-foot (4.45-meter) cast iron figure of 28 tonnes, cast in sections in Liège.
Visitors climb 226 steps to the statue and a lookout with battle maps and telescopes. Since 2015 access has been through the nearby museum, with a fee that also covers the Waterloo Panorama.
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