Images of a changing city: photographs of Antwerp from the 1860’s

In 1860, photographer Edmond Fierlants (1819-1869) was given the task of documenting the historical monuments of the city. It was one of the first large-scale series of urban photography in the world.

Oscar Nottebohm

The Nottebohm Room in the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library is named after the Antwerp patron Oscar Nottebohm (1865-1935). This particular descendant of the Nottebohm family was a grandson of Diederich Wilhelm Nottebohm who moved to Antwerp from Bielefeld in 1811.

Ordering and using reproductions

Do you need a scan or a print-out, for instance for study purposes or for a publication? You can order it from the reproduction service by email, or fill in a form at the reading room counter.

Flanders Heritage Library

The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library is the proud partner, promoter and host institution of the Flanders Heritage Library, a network of heritage libraries.

Donate your book or collection

There is no better place for unique books and special collections than the Heritage Library. We therefore welcome donations that will complement our existing collection with open arms.

Help out as a volunteer or intern

Would you like to lend us a hand in preserving our heritage? We would be delighted to welcome you as a volunteer or intern.

Newsroom

The Heritage Library is the repository for modern and historical newspapers and periodicals – on paper, on microfilm or in digital form.

Cultural and general history

The Heritage Library collects publications on general history and on the history of art and culture in Flanders and the Low Countries.

Pornography in the library

Interaction between porn and literature in Flanders

Until recently, pornography has mostly been neglected by literary scholars and historians. Academic attention to pornographic texts was confined to a small range of literary authors with a canonical status, such as the notorious libertine author Marquis de Sade. Similarly, librarians were not interested in pornographic publications, which usually circulated in a secondary circuit of junk reading. As a result of this, the mass of these pulp publications, printed on low-quality paper and deemed unworthy of keeping, has vanished through time.

Ulysses to Baedeker

Three centuries of travel advice in pocket size

Gerrit Verhoeven is a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of History of the University of Antwerp. As an urban historian, he specialises in early modern Europe, particularly – but not only – the Low Countries and Western Europe. He has published on travel and tourism, on time awareness and human capital, on the resilience of social relations, and on book history. In this blogpost he writes about the research potential of travel guides kept in the collection of Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library.