Qualla: Leuven

Leuven: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven Fruitsmaak, CC BY-SA 3.0. Order a Stella Artois almost anywhere on Earth and you are drinking, in some chain of corporate descent, from a brewery on the Vaartstraat in Leuven. The site has been making beer since 1366, when it was called Den Hoorn. Today its owner, AB InBev, is the largest brewer in the world. Half a kilometer away, in lecture halls older than the discovery of the Americas, forty thousand students at KU Leuven sit through chemistry and theology and computer science classes at the oldest Catholic university still operating. Beer and books. Brabantine Gothic and pharmaceutical multinationals. Leuven is small, walkable in an hour, and the things it does it has been doing for six centuries.

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Image: Steven Fruitsmaak | CC BY-SA 3.0

Leuven: The Town Hall the Burgundians Built

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Spircle at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Stadhuis on the Grote Markt is the most ornate civic building in Flanders, a wedding cake of Brabantine Gothic stonework completed in 1469 under the dukes of Burgundy. Every niche on every facade was meant for a statue, but the medieval sculpture program was never finished. T...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Spircle at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0

Leuven: What the Fires Took

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Angel Oswaldo Vázquez Patiño, CC BY-SA 3.0. In August 1914, advancing German troops burned central Leuven over five nights as a reprisal for alleged civilian resistance. They specifically targeted the University Library on the Ladeuzeplein and destroyed it, three hundred thousand books and a thousand medieval manuscripts g...

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Image: Angel Oswaldo Vázquez Patiño | CC BY-SA 3.0

Leuven: The Longest Bar in Europe

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wouterhagens, Public domain. The Oude Markt is a small square ringed by something like forty-five bars and restaurants, almost all of which spill out onto the cobblestones in fine weather. The local nickname is the longest bar in Europe. On a Wednesday in October, with the academic year in full swing, the sq...

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Image: Wouterhagens | Public domain

Leuven: Beguinage and Botanical Garden

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Walk south from the Grote Markt for ten minutes and the city changes. The Groot Begijnhof, founded in the thirteenth century, is a small village of brick houses and chapels enclosed by walls, originally home to lay religious women who lived in community without taking vows. It is...

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Image: Public domain