Spend a night inside part of the colon for €120
Do you find spending the night in an old lighthouse, a towering tree house, a converted port crane, a salt palace or a hotel made entirely of ice rather routine? Then you might want to consider spending €120 on a night in the so-called CasAnus, a kind of human intestine.
In 2007, Geert Verbeke and his wife Carla opened the Verbeke Foundation, one of Europe's largest collections of modern and contemporary art on the site of the former transport company Verbeke in Kemzeke. This features 12 hectares of nature and covered areas across 20,000 m². The old warehouses have since been converted into unique exhibition halls accommodating, for example, 4,500 former 20th-century collages and collections from Belgian artists in particular. Such artists may also stay a while in the residence.
The Verbeke Foundation wishes to create a place where culture, nature and ecology are connected. Therefore, the work of bio-artists and artists working with living materials (plants, animals, fragrances) fits in beautifully.
One of the most remarkable works of art is the CasAnus by the Dutch designer and sculptor Joop van Lieshout. This is modelled on the human digestive system, going from the tongue to the stomach and intestines, and all the way to the anus. While CasAnus is anatomically correct, the latter has been blown up to gigantic proportions and it is possible to spend a night inside. The American CNN Travel website has included CasAnus in the ranking of "most quirky" hotel rooms in the world.