Porn, pulp & literature

Online exhibit

In December 2019, the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library presented an unknown and long-hidden part of Flemish literature and cultural history: pornographic literature with the exhibition "Porn, pulp & literature". View the online exhibition here.

The Nottebohm Room is open to individual visitors from July 1 until September 15, 2025

The Nottebohm Room is a hidden gem. This prestigious library space shines in all its facets. In the summer of 2025 you can discover the magic of this unique place in the heart of Antwerp on your own.

Google Books in the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library

Beyond the pandemic

In February 2020, we announced that Google Books, the Hendrik Conscience Library and the Plantin-Moretus Museum were starting a project to digitize 100,000 books from our collections that are in the public domain. Just a few days later, the country went into lockdown. How has the project proceeded over this eventful year?

The Fragment of John Holt’s grammar 'Lac puerorum or Mylke for Chyldren'

A blogpost by Dr. Hedwig Gwosdek

This short paper is a preliminary contribution to my study on John Holt’s grammar 'Lac puerorum or Mylke for Children'. As school texts of the sixteenth century and beyond are extremely rare, this copy deserves to be examined in more depth in a scholarly article. I hope to be able to examine it in person in the Heritage Library Hendrik Conscience in the near future.

Assessing the significance of early printed mathematical books

In the Spring it was exactly 400 years since the death of the mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620). In order to better understand the world in which Stevin lived and wrote, five flemish heritage libraries assessed their collection of early printed books in the field of mathematics. The Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library was one of the partners participating in this collection assessment project.

Consult digital publications at home

Request temporary access for research

Users who want to consult copyright-protected publications from our digital collections for research or education purposes can now do so at home. A new application in our digital library makes this possible.

Conditions of sale

Conditions of sale when purchasing an online ticket

Travel grant brings Ashley Gonik (Harvard University) to Antwerp

Three research vlogs

In 2019, Ashley Gonik received a travel grant from the Nottebohm Foundation to conduct research on the collections of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and the Plantin-Moretus Museum. Are you curious about the life of an American researcher in Antwerp? In three short research vlogs she tells about her journey, research and experiences.