Art: Hidden Treasure

The village of Zoutleeuw goes unmarked on most maps; it lies some 40 miles from Brussels. In the early Middle Ages, Zoutleeuw was a bustling commercial center, pitched at the intersection of trade routes between the Rhineland, the County of Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant. Then alliances and frontiers shifted, and trade with them. By the end of the 16th century, Zoutleeuw was on the way to becoming a ghost town. Religious wars, famine, flood, fire and the plague almost finished it off, and it ended as an isolated country hamlet inhabited by...