Leuven on foot

The café on our second to last slide was demolished in 2020 and rebuilt out of its own bricks, lanterns and all.

That is a fairly Leuven way to do things: keep the brick, change everything behind it. We live here, so we do not visit this city, we come home to it, and once you notice the habit you see it everywhere.

The brewery at the Vaartkom where the first Stella Artois was brewed at Christmas 1926 is apartments and offices now, with the star still on the wall. The abbey hill is a public park with a lift from Engels Plein, and the Madonna on top, blessed there in 1906, was cleaned and reopened last year. The university library burned in 1914 and came back in 1928 on American money, with 48 bells, one for every American state at the time. The Kruidtuin has been a botanical garden since 1738, the oldest in the country, and is still free to walk into. Even the street with the peacock is being rebuilt around the peacock: dzia and Sir 5 painted it, the walls either side came down, this one is still standing.

Five afternoons over one summer, photographing our own city as if we had just arrived, which is the only way either of us notices anything.

Keizersberg: free, lift and stairs from Engels Plein

Kruidtuin, Kapucijnenvoer 30: free, open until 8 in summer

Peacock: Mechelsestraat 197A, by dzia and Sir 5

Leon Keer mural: Dirk Boutslaan, free, his app makes it move

Library tower climb: Ladeuzeplein 21, around 7 euro

De Lantaarn: Vaartkom 10

They say a pipe runs from the brewery straight into that café. We have never met anyone who has seen it. Has anyone?