Leuven - University Town

The Catholic university, which was founded in 1425 and rapidly became one of the most highly regarded universities in Europe, is world famous. Once the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam and Justus Lipsius taught here. The geographer Gerhard Mercator studied here and one of its chancellors was elected Pope Adrian VI in 1459. The university library was unparalleled yet was set on fire by the German occupying forces in 1914 and again in 1940 with the irretrievable loss of over a million volumes.

Many regard the division of the university in 1968, following linguistic quarrels between the Flemish and Walloons, as the "Third Destruction": the Francophile teachers and students broke away and established the "Université Catholique de Louvain" in the new university town of Louvain-la-Neuve. The books were divided between them on the basis of odd and even shelf-marks - a really insane initiative.

Today 24,000 students are matriculated at the university to soak up knowledge as amusingly demonstrated by the statue on the fountain "Fons Sapientiae", known as "Fonske", in the Grote Markt.