Leuven the Old

February 3: My next trip was off to the city of Leuven, which is the namesake of the city I'm staying in. The school, Catholic University of Leuven, was founded in the 1425 in the Flemish (dutch) part of Belgium. However, there has been a conflict for hundreds of years between Flanders (Flemish) and Wallonia (French). Finally in 1968, after 133 years of French teaching in the Flemish part of the country, the school split into a dutch school in Leuven, and a French school. The city Louvain-la-Neuve (The New Leuven) was built just to house this school.

So for my trip, we went on a Saturday, and most things in European cities are not open on Saturdays. However, we did manage to get into the church and national treasury. The top picture is of St. Peter's Church built from 1425-1500. It is one of the most prominent buildings in town, and had many paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries among it's 12 chapels. The chapels are part of what is known as the treasury. It's a seperate sort of museum behind the alter in the church, and it contains elaborate relics from Catholic culture. Also, we were able to visit the crypt of the church, which was surprisingly not the resting place of anything. It had been fully cleared out, but back upstairs was the tomb of Duke Henry 1 of Brabant.

Next, as we were walking through town, we came across that next picture, which is the oldest early gothic style church in Leuven. Then, we made it back to Grande Place (if you haven't noticed yet, the main square of every city in Belgium seems to be called Grande Place). In the picture on the left, you can see the traditional row houses again.

On the right, is the town hall. Leuven was built from the profits of the fabric industry, and named after the type of fabric(Lewyn) that was made there. It's pretty much impossible to see, but the town hall depicts all the different stages of fabric making in an attempt to honor the guild that supported the city.

Finally, we went to the Botanical Gardens, or "Jardins Botaniques". There weren't many flowering plants at this time of the year, but there was still a Japanese style garden with a koi pond, as well as some interesting sculptures... so it was a nice break from looking at all of the architecture.