The story
M is a deliberate collage of buildings. In 2009 the Belgian architect Stéphane Beel joined the 19th-century home of Leopold Vander Kelen, a former mayor of Leuven, and the old Saint Ivo college of the university to two new wings, giving the city's long-established municipal museum a far larger home.
The collection runs from the Middle Ages to the present, about 46,000 objects, and its core is the art of the old Duchy of Brabant. Late Gothic sculpture and painting is a particular strength. From the 17th century there is a church interior by Pieter Neefs the Elder, the Antwerp specialist in such views, and Passion scenes by Frans Francken the Younger, and the 19th century is represented by sculptors such as Constantin Meunier and George Minne. Changing exhibitions put contemporary artists beside this older material.
M also looks after the treasures of Saint Peter's Church, a few minutes' walk away, and the museum ticket covers it. There Dieric Bouts's Last Supper, painted between 1464 and 1468 for a local brotherhood of the Holy Sacrament, still hangs in the church it was made for, and through the windows behind the table Bouts painted glimpses of 15th-century Leuven.
