Leuven: Belgium’s most underrated city

From the vertiginous belltower of Leuven’s university library, you get a great view across the mottled rooftops of Belgium’s most underrated city. Leuven isn’t swarming with sightseers, like Bruges. It isn’t choked with commuter traffic, like Brussels. It’s lively and compact, ideal for a weekend away – so why have most British travellers never even heard of it? Search me. I’ve just spent three days here and I had a great time. I can’t wait to go again.

One of the best things about Leuven is, it’s so easy to get here: two hours via Eurostar from London St Pancras to Brussels, and then a local train to Leuven from the same station. Trains leave every ten minutes at peak times and take around half an hour. Eurostar’s Any Belgian Station ticket (from £51 each way) covers both legs of the journey, saving you the hassle of buying another ticket when you change trains at Brussels Midi.

I first came to Leuven seven years ago, to see an exhibition about Thomas More’s Utopia. More’s strange, beguiling fantasy, his prophetic vision of an ideal society, was first published here, in 1516, and in 2016 Leuven’s main museum, M Leuven, mounted a fascinating show to mark the book’s 500th birthday. But for me, the main attraction was the city itself.

More’s Sci-Fi yarn was launched here, rather than in his native England, because Leuven, then as now, was the seat of one of Europe’s leading universities – the adopted home of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the greatest thinker of his age. Erasmus was good friends with More, and when he offered to publish Utopia in (relatively) liberal Leuven, the future Lord Chancellor and Catholic martyr was happy to oblige (it wasn’t printed in England until 1551, long after Sir Thomas – latterly Saint Thomas – got his head chopped off).

Seven years on, I’m back in Leuven for another exhibition, devoted to the 15th Century painter Dieric Bouts, who spent most of his life here. Dieric who? Precisely. Bouts was a leading member of the so-called ‘Flemish Primitives’, whose astute, accomplished paintings dragged Northern European art out of the Dark Ages and into the light of the Renaissance. Although he’s revered by art historians, Bouts is little known beyond Belgium. This colourful, enjoyable show, with its gory depictions of tortured saints and gleeful sadistic demons, confirms what a powerful artist he was. The Bouts revival starts here.

Bouts’ greatest painting, The Last Supper, usually has pride of place in Sint Pieterskerk, Leuven’s ethereal cathedral – an exquisite example of late gothic architecture, a haven of peaceful contemplation amid the urban bustle. Across the cobbled square is the Stadhuis, Leuven’s opulent town hall, an ornate relic of the city’s mercantile heyday during the Middle Ages, when it was the biggest conurbation in Burgundy, a wealthy hub of the wool trade.

The medieval city centre remained more or less intact until the First World War, when much of it was burnt down by the Kaiser’s army, including the university library and much of its precious collection – a cultural atrocity which shocked the world. Rebuilt between the wars, only to be burnt again during the Nazi occupation, it was rebuilt once more after the Second World War – an inspiring symbol of the triumph of learning over barbarism.

Leuven is a city on a human scale, a pleasant place to wander. It’s not uniformly beautiful, like Bruges, but amid the bland modern buildings are numerous clusters of medieval architecture, wonderfully bereft of tourists. Hidden down a sleepy sidestreet, Martin’s Klooster is an antique villa, 500 years old, once the home of Guy Morillon, secretary to the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Today it’s a smart hotel, yet though the building is palatial, the house style is refreshingly informal. The rooms are suave and understated, and the service is friendly and relaxed.

Eating out is always a pleasure in Flanders, particularly here in Leuven, where the standard seems especially high. Last time I came here, I had a delicious dinner in one of Leuven’s best restaurants, Land aan de Overkant. Returning seven years later, I was glad to find the quality was just as good. This time, in honour of Dieric Bouts (or Derek, as I prefer to call him), they’d laid on a medieval menu. No potatoes, tomatoes or peppers, but lots of spices from the Holy Land, brought back by the Crusaders: ginger, cloves and cumin, saffron and cinnamon.

Leuven’s most famous export is Stella Artois, beloved by countless thirsty Brits, like me. Real ale snobs tend to be rather snooty about this mass-produced brew, preferring the dark, malty beers which are more synonymous with Belgium, but I’ve always been a fan of this crisp, unpretentious lager, and it’s a thrill to find it here on draught, in bars all over town. Does Stella actually taste any better on tap, in the city where it’s been brewed for the last century? I like to think so, but maybe that’s the beer talking.

You can visit the modern brewery, on the edge of town, but an even bigger treat is a trip to the original brewery, in a hip, up-and-coming, post-industrial district, which has been tastefully converted into a groovy events space called De Hoorn. The in-house restaurant dishes up hearty, tasty grub in a huge, cavernous hall filled with trestle tables – terrific fun.

I finished my latest trip to Leuven back where I began, at the university library, desecrated in both world wars, now a place of scholarship again. I’d come to see an exhibition called (Un)Chained Knowledge, about fake news and censorship during Dieric Bouts’ lifetime. I was intrigued to see how censors blotted out the naughty bits in biblical illustrations and scratched out whole passages by Erasmus – far too progressive for their tastes.

With the invention of movable type transforming printing and publishing, Leuven in the age of Bouts was the Silicon Valley of its day. This information revolution facilitated the Reformation, igniting centuries of bloody conflict. It made me wonder where our current information revolution will lead.

I left this exhibition full of gloom, brooding about impending Armageddon, but on my way out I saw something that lifted my spirits and sent me home hopeful for the future. I tiptoed into the great reading room of this august library, lovingly restored twice over, after its destruction in those twin infernos, and found it full of silent students – reading, writing, lost in thought. For these young men and women, the two world wars are ancient history, as remote as the dynastic wars which ravaged Flanders in the Middle Ages. Today Leuven’s university is the city’s economic driver, and its big student population gives it a youthful buzz, saving it from genteel atrophy. Perhaps the pen really is mightier than the sword, after all.