Olmen
section of Balen, Belgium
Olmen is a village in the province of Antwerp, Belgium. The village is part of the municipality of Balen.
Olmen is known in the area for its Carnival, which still follows medieval traditions.
History
The village was first mentioned as Olmele in 1288. Olmen was an independent heerlijkheid and an agricultural community. In 1977, the municipality was merged into Balen.
Carnaval
The Carnaval in Olmen does not have a parade, but is celebrated with the medieval Hanenkappen. The person who manages to decapitate the rooster becomes the king of its party.
Zoo
The Pakawi Park is a zoo in the village which specializes in felidae. The zoo used to be called Olmen Zoo, but was closed in 2017, due to animal welfare breaches.
“Olmen” enters the record as section of Balen, Belgium. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Olmen, section and Balen can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Olmen” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Olmen, section and Balen provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2673652. Authority coordinates are 51.141, 5.148. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1288, 1977 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Olmen” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.