A construction crew discovered gold worth an estimated $10 million while working at the site of a former Belgian brewery that is being redeveloped to provide housing and services for homeless people.
The team of eight workers in Dendermonde, Belgium, found the treasure last week after a drill struck a gold bar, according to local police. The cache was discovered in the cellar of a villa built for former brewery owner Theophilus Van Assche.
Among the workers was an 18-year-old student named Kobe, who was doing a summer job and was the first to spot the gold. The crew notified both their employer and police about the discovery, which included gold coins and dozens of bullion bars. "Our teams collected and catalogued the gold, after which it was immediately secured in a highly secure federal vault," local police said in a statement on their Facebook page.
Photos released after the discovery showed 49 gold bars laid out on a table at the construction site and hundreds of gold coins collected in a builders' bucket. The largely gutted property is being renovated by the social welfare organization CAW Oost-Vlaanderen. Workers came across the treasure while laying sewage pipes as part of the redevelopment.
The fate of the gold remains unclear. Legal proceedings could ultimately determine whether it belongs to descendants of the Van Assche family, the organization overseeing the redevelopment, the construction company or the workers who found it. Authorities are also investigating whether the bullion could be stolen property or the proceeds of criminal activity.
An 18 year old construction worker thought he'd found a bucket of one-Euro coins. He was actually looking at $10.4 MILLION in gold, bricked into a wall by someone whose identity nobody has ever figured out.
> A construction crew was renovating a building in… pic.twitter.com/qkJdmxnHI2
— Comet (@cometwtf) August 15, 2026
Dendermonde, a city in Belgium's East Flanders province northwest of Brussels, has meanwhile warned would-be treasure hunters to stay away from the site, saying all the gold had already been removed and that the construction area contained dangerous pits. "Various gold seekers apparently seem eager to visit the site," police said in their statement. "A word of advice: There really is no point."
The find comes at an especially lucrative time for bullion. Gold futures were trading at about $4,400 a troy ounce in mid-August, although spot gold was just below that level on Aug. 17.
Former Dendermonde Mayor Piet Buyse told Belgian media that the treasure probably belonged to the Van Assche family, once among the city's wealthy brewing families. He said it would not surprise him if the family had converted some of its fortune into gold and hidden it for safekeeping.
Although the gold has yet to acquire a new owner, at least one piece has already been put to use. Dendermonde police adopted as their Facebook profile picture an image of one of the British gold sovereigns found at the site, bearing a portrait of the young Queen Victoria.
