Provinces of Belgium
During the second half of the 20th century, Belgium transitioned from a unitary state to a federal state with three Communities and three Regions. As part of the state reforms, the (bilingual) province of Brabant was split in 1995 three ways: into two (unilingual) provinces (Flemish Brabant and Walloon Brabant) and into the (bilingual) Brussels-Capital Region. (The Brussels-Capital Region does not belong to any province, is not a province, and does not contain any provinces.) The two new Brabant provinces became part of the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region respectively. The remaining eight provinces became part of these regions as well, so the Flemish Region and the Walloon Region each contain five provinces.
List of National Roads in Belgium
The first network consists of national roads, each starting from the capital Brussels and forming a clockwise star.
The second network groups the national roads that are linked to major cities and towns of Belgium, excluding Brussels.
The third network is composed of provincial national roads. The first digit corresponds to a province—from 1 to 9—based upon the old provinces and in alphabetical order in French, thus: Province of Antwerp; Province of Brabant; Province of West Flanders; Province of East Flanders; Province of Hainaut; Province of Liège; Province of Limburg; Province of Luxemburg; and Province of Namur.
Due to linguistic differences, the national road N58 took more than twenty years to build. It does not actually run from Dottignies to Armentières as anticipated because the road is split into two sections: the first stretches from Armentières in France up to Menen where it joins onto the A19 motorway; the other part starts in the village of Dronkaard to the southeast of Menen, and ends in the village of Dottignies.