From, Beautiful Buildings in France & Belgium, Including many which have been destroyed during the war. Reproductions in Colour and Monochrome from rare old Prints and Drawings, by and after Prout, Boys, Coney, W. Callow, David Roberts, C. Wild and others, with descriptive notes, by C. Harrison Townsend, F.R.I.B.A.; New York: The Hubbell Publishing Co., 1916; pp. 128-131.
LOUVAIN : HÔTEL DE VILLE
(G. Simonau)
OUVAIN, that Oxford of the Low Countries, rich with the old associations and quiet of its English prototype, picturesque to the painter and full of appeal to the architect, was in great part destroyed by the Germans on August 25, 1914. The magnificent church of St. Pierre, dating from 1425 — the possessor of one of the most renowned rood-screens in Belgium and of fine examples of the work of Matseys — is now but a mangled ruin. Its poor remains tell of the cruel and methodical system of incendiarism that kept the town
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burning for thirty-six hours, and it now lies roofless, with bare and battered gables.
The University, perhaps the most famous in Europe in the XVIth century, was originally the Cloth-hall, or warehouse for the Cloth-makers’ Guild, and contained the most valuable library in Belgium, now dealt with at his will by the invader, and looted or destroyed.
The Hôtel de Ville, however, one of the most remarkable and elaborately decorated pieces of architecture in existence, has miraculously almost escaped uninjured. Though, perhaps, there is in this charming building an excess of ornamental detail, yet the whole is so consistent, and the outline and general scheme so good, that it can justly claim to be one of the most beautiful buildings we know.
Copyright © 2007 by Elfinspell