Picardy Wallonia (French:Wallonie picarde,pronounced[walɔnipikaʁd];Picard:Walonnie picarte) orWestern Hainaut (French:Hainaut-Occidental;Picard:Hénau occhidintal) is the North-West part of theprovince of Hainaut inWallonia, where thePicard language is used.
The most important city in Picardy Wallonia isTournai which is also the oldest city of the Low countries. TheTournai Cathedral, has been classified both as aWallonia's major heritage and as aWorld Heritage Site.Tournai is labelled onTabula Peutingeriana. Tournai gives its name to theTournaisian: The “Calcaire de Tournai” comprises the limestone formations cropping out in the Mélantois-Tournaisis Anticline (...) which have been quarried since the Roman conquest. Its relationship with the succession of the Dinant area was only understood following study of the Asile d’Aliénés borehole at Tournai and the Vieux-Leuze borehole atLeuze [...] These boreholes exhibited a rather typical middle Tournaisian succession below the “Calcaire de Tournai” that was easy to correlate with the succession of the Dinant area.[1]
The largest find ofIguanodon remains to date occurred in 1878 in a coal mine atBernissart, at a depth of 322 m (1056 ft).[2]
Casterman, an important company based inTournai, publishedFranco-Belgian comics. In 1934, Casterman took over theLe Petit Vingtième editions for the publication of the albums ofThe Adventures of Tintin, and after the great success ofHergé's albums, authors such asJacques Martin,François Craenhals andC. & V. Hansen, the first albums ofCorto Maltese by theItalian authorHugo Pratt. The company established its monthly magazine(A Suivre), which was to influence the comics revival of the 1990s. It is now part of theFlammarion Publishing group.
Saluk inCalenelle (Péruwelz) produces and distributes billiard balls under the registered trademark Aramith in more than 85 countries, and has a marketshare of 80% worldwide (90% of the US market).[3]