Leuven

Leuven has been thinking and brewing in equal measure since the fifteenth century. The university, founded in 1425, is the oldest in the Low Countries — Erasmus taught here, Mercator studied here, Vesalius dissected here — and its library became the twentieth century's symbol of cultural martyrdom: burned by the German army in 1914, rebuilt by international subscription, burned again in 1940, rebuilt again; the carillon in its tower now plays over students who know the story. Across town, the Gothic town hall performs its own miracle — a stone reliquary bristling with 236 statues, lacework masquerading as architecture — and the Grand Beguinage, a UNESCO-listed village of lanes and gardens within the city, houses professors where beguines once prayed.

The brewing is no metaphor: Stella Artois traces its Leuven ancestry to 1366, and the city hosts the headquarters of the world's largest brewer, making Leuven the administrative capital of beer itself. Students conduct their seminars accordingly on the Oude Markt, a square of continuous café terraces fondly billed as "the longest bar in Europe".

Musical life keeps the intimate register the concert record describes — chamber concerts, university ensembles, church music under the carillons — raised each autumn by festivals that fill the beguinage churches and concert halls. Twice-burned books, six centuries of lectures, and a beer older than America: Leuven is proof that memory and merriment share premises well.