The built heritage of Belgium

Touring Belgium 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.