The Rise of Architectural History in Belgium 1830–1914

Abstract

On the map of nineteenth-century architectural historiographies in Western Europe, Belgium has so far remained a blind spot. While the country’s architectural history of the nineteenth century has already received some (if selective) international attention, with a somewhat disproportionate focus on the Art Nouveau, the historiography arising alongside of it has largely remained outside the picture. Meanwhile, considerations as to Belgium’s particular situation, which presumably influenced its architecture, equally apply to its historiography; for instance its design as a crossroads of influences, as demonstrated in research into the Belgian Catholic Gothic Revival and into nineteenth-century (architectural) history in general, among cases one could cite. While interesting because of its own particularities, Belgium also represents a type of ‘smaller European country’ created in the nineteenth century, whose architectural history has been characterized as ‘often fascinating precisely in the extent to which [these countries] present attempts to resolve the inherent contradictions between the major interpretive models and prescriptions of the English Pugin-Ruskin tradition, French Rationalism, and the more archaeological approach of the Cologne school’. The relatively limited corpus of Belgian architectural historiography — at least when compared with the historiographies of the United Kingdom, France or Germany — is an additional advantage, since it makes the field of study more easily definable and thus allows for more detailed study.