Tafelrond (The fourth)
From 1479, the building was a meeting place for different guilds in the city of Leuven. The Rhetoricians left the greatest mark on the building, where they gathered to recite poetry and to drink. This has been nicely illustrated in the bas-relief of Jan de Bruyne with his knights of the Round Table which was in the building at that time.After it had been demolished and rebuilt, music and theatre reanimated the building in 1817. The Tafelrond was a theatre for audiences of close to a thousand people where performances took place which are similar to those we think of today as living room concerts.The Tafelrond was bombed and destroyed during the First World War. After the war, it was rebuilt in its original Gothic style of the architect de Layens and now looks as it did in its first life. From 1930, it served as the Leuven branch of the National Bank.The Tafelrond now begins its fourth life as a unique hotel with lyrical stories within and around its walls. The building’s impressive pasts and dimensions are fused with tomorrow's technology and interwoven into the present.