Touring Belgium

Touring Belgium: A Nation's Patrimony in Print (1830-1920) is a book that presents a wide range of printed media – from travel guides and collected letters to albums, from picture postcards to bibliographies and war-time propaganda – to explore how the print culture developing in the wake of travel and tourism helped to establish a national architectural heritage. Covering material from the period of Belgian independence through the aftermath of World War I, eight historians of art and architecture each situate one main publication against a dazzling background of nineteenth and early twentieth-century cultural discourses, revolutions in image reproduction, and emerging heritage management.

Reproductions in the middle part of the book present the core publications as material objects. These printed artifacts bring into view a nascent heritage that ranges from gothic town halls and dead cities to modern factories and railroad infrastructure; often there is little distinction between what threatens or enshrines the national patrimony. Writers like Schnaase and Hugo, museum conservators like Schayes and Kervyn de Lettenhove, symbolist painters like Hannotiau, innovative lithographers like Simonau, and publishers like Géruzet or the Touring-club de Belgique all bring their concerns to bear on what they see as Belgian heritage. Their preoccupations with patrimony help to craft Belgium as a nation with a history at the crossroads of Europe – historic architecture becomes a reality embedded in the territory as much as an imagery fabricated in print.

The book was edited by Maarten Delbeke (ETH Zurich/UGent) and Maarten Liefooghe (UGent), and published with Brepols in the Architectural Crossroads series in 2024, both in print and in Open Access online. The book originated in the HERA-funded European research project Printing the Past. Architecture, Print Culture, and Uses of the Past in Modern Europe (PriArc), directed by prof. Mari Hvattum. It includes contributions by Willem Bekers, Maarten Delbeke, Stefan Huygebaert, Henrik Karge, Maarten Liefooghe, David Peleman, Beatriz Van Houtte Alonso, Ellen Van Impe, and Jasper Van Parys. Photography of historical publications in and by Ghent University Library - Boekentoren. Book design by Ruttens-Wille.

Project Info

Research group: Architecture Culture and the Contemporary (ACC) and Theory and History of Architecture
Duration: from 15-09-2025 to 29-11-2021
Researchers: Maarten Liefooghe, Maarten Delbeke, Beatriz Van Houtte Alonso and Willem Bekers