A walk through Leuven around 1525

Описание: An impression of the historic city center of Leuven (Belgium) around 1525. During the decades around that year, people such as Andreas Vesalius, Gerard Mercator, Thomas Moore, Desiderius Erasmus and Gemma Frisius resided in the city. It's the period around which the construction works of the towers of the main church (towers that were suppsed to be the highest in the world!) were stopped.

Is this impression correct? Well, it's an impression. The main buildings, such as the cloth hall, town hall, Saint Peter's church, the toll house, the 'Tafelrond' (Table Round), are probably correct. Also some houses (especially the ones at the market, plus some others in the adjacent streets) are probably correct as well, they are modelled according to historic drawings, prints or photo's. For the rest of the houses, we know that the location and width of the facades is more or less correct, but the rest is merely imagination... even though we know that most of the houses in that era were made of wood and renders, masonry was limited to the base of houses and intermediate (fire)walls between houses. Rich people could afford houses in brickwork and stone. But still, even though it looks historically correct, it remains partially imagination... but it's also difficult to prove that this 'phantasy' is wrong ;)

A peculiar point is the graveyard surrounding the church. In those days, mostly no big burial monuments were erected on cemeteries. Usually wooden crosses were placed, and they disappeared rather quickly. Cemeteries were often used as orchards, the presence of fruit trees on cemeteries was quite normal. So we also placed on here, even though there is no historic proof for this.

I noticed some bugs in the film, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyhow!

© Yves Vanhellemont