Leuven

Landmarks

What I would eat first.

Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.

• Stadhuis van Leuven 1,500 points

  Count the figures in the niches, if you have the afternoon. I do. They only moved in between 1852 and 1907, which makes every one of them younger than the wall holding it up.

• M-Museum 500 points

  It has a roof terrace. Go up, and the roofs you have walked under all afternoon line up in one row. I rarely get to look down on a street.

• Sint-Geertruiabdij 500 points

  The far north tip of the ring, where the lanes empty out and the water comes back. There is a garden behind it that most visitors miss. I did not.

• Sint-Pieterskerk 500 points

  Three towers were meant to go up here, the middle one 168 metres. Soft subsoil and empty coffers ended the work in 1541, and the stumps have sat there ever since. I like a building that admits it took too big a bite.

• Universiteitsbibliotheek 500 points

  The tower is open to visitors and there is no lift. Good. From the balcony the whole flat country lies out around you, and every step up was yours.

• Eerste stadsomwalling van Leuven 250 points

  Most of it is gone, and you will walk its line all day without knowing. The shape of this whole level is the shape it left behind. Bits surface between the buildings if you look sideways.

• Hemeltoren De Eerste Verstoring 250 points

  A tower of dirt, rammed solid, set in a courtyard where everything else was quarried. Small, brown and entirely serious. Best texture on this level, and I have views about texture.

• Pater Damiaanplein 250 points

  Named for a man who left this town for an island on the far side of the world. He is back now, and he is not going anywhere. Neither am I.

• Sint-Jan de Doperkerk 250 points

  The far south end, and the reason this level reaches down there at all. UNESCO listed the entire neighbourhood: brick, footbridges, no traffic, and a church in the middle of it. Nobody here is in a hurry.

• Waterpoort De Grote Spui 250 points

  The low corner of the level, where the river slips under the street and out of sight. You can cross it and miss it entirely. Look down. Everything in this town drains to here, me included.

Why here

Somebody stood here and decided.

A road came down from Tienen towards Elewijt and crossed the Dijle right here, and a crossing is a place where everybody has to slow down. The low part of town sits on the flat river ground, the rest climbs the terraces on either side, which is why so many street names here end in -berg. In 1014 Count Lambert moved his stronghold onto the island in the river, and the town grew around him.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Who ruled

Everyone who thought they owned this.

I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.

1014–1188

The counts. In 1014 Count Lambert moved his stronghold out of the older settlement and onto the island in the river, which is the moment this becomes a town with somebody in charge of it. The family kept growing, and by 1188 the county of Leuven had turned into the duchy of Brabant.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1188–1430

The dukes of Brabant, though not from here for long. In the second half of the 13th century Leuven lost its position as the ducal residence to Brussels and never got it back. What Leuven did about that was ask for a university and build itself a new town hall, both of them aimed squarely at the neighbours.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1430–1795

Burgundy, then the Habsburgs. Brabant passed to Duke Philip the Good in 1430 because a cousin died without children, and in 1482 the whole set of provinces went to the Habsburgs the same way. Nobody here was consulted either time. The title outlived the men who held it and ended in 1795, when France annexed the lot.

Sources: nl.wikipedia.org

1795–1830

France, then the Netherlands. The French closed the university in 1797: being famously Catholic did it no good under that government. Twenty years later, in 1817, King William I of the Netherlands opened it again as a state university that was meant to be impartial. Nobody in Leuven was asked about either decision.

Sources: www.kuleuven.be

1830–

Belgium. A provisional government declared independence on 4 October 1830, and in 1834 the Belgian bishops made the university Catholic again. That was the first time in eight hundred years the question of who runs this town was settled anywhere near it.

Sources: www.belgium.be, www.kuleuven.be

Three facts

Three things I know about this place.

1. Look at Leuven on a map and the centre sits inside a hard ring of boulevards. That ring is a wall. From 1805 the outer town wall and its gates came down, the dismantling ran on from 1812 to 1828, and the empty strip was laid out as boulevards. Everything inside it is the Old Town. The circle you walk in this level is the smaller, older ring inside that one.

   Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

2. Leuven asked for its university itself. The city put in the request, the duke of Brabant and the local clergy backed it, and on 9 December 1425 Pope Martin V granted it in a bull called Sapientie immarcessibilis. It is the oldest university in the Low Countries, and students have been wearing down these streets for six hundred years. That is a slow way to eat a street, but it counts.

   Sources: www.kuleuven.be

3. The dukes kept a castle on the hill just north of the Old Town. By 1783 it was falling apart, and the emperor in Vienna decided to have it pulled down and the building stone sold off. That is the most efficient thing anybody in this story ever did. I still think about the stone.

   Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.

• 108streets
• 1,306dots
• 20.4km of street
• 26.7km on foot
• 7.6hours at a stroll