At today’s press conference launch of the Mons 2015 program, we launched something special and sparkling - new Indoor Street View images. Street View cars and trikes captured new imagery of some of Mons’s most famous buildings - both their exteriors - and for the first time, their interiors. These include the splendid Grand Place, including the inside of the the City Hall, the Collégiale Sainte Waudru, and the BAM art museum.
Mons is an architectural treasure. The canonesses of the Sainte Waudru religious community began their first church in 1450 and the Brabant Gothic style church remains of the most beautiful buildings in Mons. Inside, the exceptional Treasure of Sainte Waudru houses a precious collection of gold and remarkable 16th-century alabaster statues from the artist and Mons resident Jacques du Broeucq.
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The historic city centre is dominated by the Grand Place and its remarkable City Hall. Commissioned by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, famed architect Matthijs de Layens designed the imposing edifice.
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Throughout the coming year and a half, we’ll continue to support the Mons 2015 adventure, in particular by working with our longtime partners, the Mundaneum archive. More than a century ago, two visionary Belgians envisioned the World Wide Web’s architecture of hyperlinks and indexation of information, not on computers, but on paper cards. Their creation was called the Mundaneum.
The Mundaneum plans an exciting “Mapping Knowledge” exhibition. Together, we are bringing high-level speakers to the city to explore Internet issues. Our own chief Internet evangelist and “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf recently visited and presented his vision of the future to a packed audience at the city’s 600 seat Manege Theater. Mons’ time on the big stage of European culture promises many more exciting events.