Historic Leuven Town Hall

Absolutely stunning Town Hall. It’s a shame it was closed for renovations

A beautiful building in the center of Leuven with 235 statues to admire. It’s a must see if you are visiting Leuven. There are daily one hour tours in Dutch and English and on the weekend in French. In these tours you visit the interior of the building while learning about the history. The cost is 4 euros and you can buy tickets in the tourist office around the corner. Starting in September 2024, this building will be closed for renovation until 2029. So if you want to take a tour, I would recommend doing it now!

Magnificent and Magical - this is the most iconic spots in Leuven. Don’t forget to book a guided tour if you want to visit the interiors. The inside of the town hall is well preserved with wooden ceilings and chandeliers transporting us to that era. Very beautiful!!!

This building is certainly one that has impressed me the most while visiting Leuven. It is centre of Leuven. Leuven's Town Hall is the historic city's pièce de résistance. Moreover, it's one of the best-known Gothic town halls worldwide. It took three architects and thirty years to build it. Leuven's 'Hall of Fame' features 235 statues, which were only added to the facade after 1850.

This is the best-known Gothic town hall. Leuven's 'Hall of Fame' features 235 statues Which took three architects and thirty years to build it.

This city town hall is one of most beautiful hall, it's just stunning with the little detail of arts. Especially, with the sunset light reflex toward the Hall, just gorgeous.

Such a beautiful city hall, happening square. Especially great in winter with Christmas lights. Preferable to go at-least once and to keep in your bucket list.

Spectacular building with a Flemish Gothic façade, although the remains of Leuven's first town hall, built in 1439 and located on the main square, are no longer preserved. It has been destroyed and rebuilt three times in the last hundred years, the last time after the Second World War. On the outside we can see 236 statues, all of them of important figures in the history of the city, arranged by floors: on the ground floor we find academics and artists, on the ground floor religious figures, on the first floor members of the nobility and finally, at the top of the towers, scenes from the Bible are represented.

Belgium is a little country with a big network of bicycle routes. Not American-style bike routes, either, that are often aspirational or just plain fictional, littered with broken glass and double-parked Fedex trucks. Belgian bike routes are for real. They're often dedicated bike paths that usher you over the top of dikes or along old canal tow paths that date to the days when canal barges were pulled by horses. I follow one of the routes, Stedenroute LF 2A, into a town called Mechelen that has a central square full of pretty buildings that aren't nearly as old and historical as they look. Two world wars took care of the real stuff. Now Flanders is full of fakes. Not fakes like the knockoff Gucci handbags you find on Canal Street in NYC, but fakes like the prosthetic limbs of a war veteran. Fakes that fit inside the outlines of old traumas. That cover up bullet holes and bomb craters. So maybe some of these Flemish towns feel like theme parks. But it's kind of heartless to complain about it. Leuven is next, a bustling college town with a Rathaus that looks like an enormous block of granite that got dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. Now it's covered with High Gothic crustaceans. All manner of arches and finials and shady looking statues loitering in canopied niches. On top of all that, there's a second decorative order of soot and pigeon poop.