The university town of Louvain-la-Neuve is an urban project initiated by the Catholic University of Louvain at the end of the sixties, following the move of the Francophone section of the Catholic University of Louvain, originally located in Leuven.  The placing of the first brick by the King Baudouin on February 2, 1971 marked the moment that the Louvain-la-Neuve project became a reality.  At the same time, UCL created the Woluwe campus for its medical school and an important university hospital.

The Louvain-la-Neuve site

From the beginning of the seventies, the meadows, woods and fields of the Lauzelle plateau left a place for a true university town.  The town is made up of six districts: the entirely pedestrian center on a concrete slab, is located among a cluster of small valleys and extends to the 7-hectare artificial lake.  All around, the districts of Hocaille, Bruyères, Biéreau and Lauzelle ascend the sides of this small valley.

The university buildings are dispersed throughout the site to promote contact between the different users of the urban center.  Shops, businesses, administrative premises and housing are mixed together with academic buildings.  The districts, mainly residential, are quickly accessible on foot.

Watch the introductory film on Louvain-la-Neuve 

Photos: copyright Jacky Delorme

Some city figures

• 10,281 people live in Louvain-la-Neuve, community entity of Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve.
• 9,703 ‘koteurs’ (“dormers”, UCL student residents)
• 37,000 people welcomed each day, including 11,000 employees
• 920 hectares including :
  • the Lauzelle Woods (200 hectares)
  • green spaces (168 hectares)
  • a golf course (64 hectares)
  • a lake (7 hectares)
  • a pedestrian center (4 hectares)
• 6 districts: Baraque, Biéreau, Bruyères, Centre, Hocaille, Lauzelle
• 350 shops and businesses, including a mall (100 shops)
• 7,946 parking spots

A multi-secular university

Founded in 1425 in Louvain (Leuven), UCL is one of the oldest universities in the world, like Oxford, Paris, Coimbra, Salamanca, Bologna or Heifelberg.  Celebrities have attended and taught there, including Erasme, Mercator, Vésale, etc.

In the 20th century, important people like Georges Lemaître, author of the Big Bang theory, and Christian de Duve, Nobel Prize winner in medicine, taught at the university.

Today, UCL has 12 colleges, 50 departments, 200 research units, 5,000 professors, researchers and employees and 21,000 students of 122 different nationalities.

Complete figures of UCL