A strange iron globe sits in a quiet cobbled courtyard in the university town of Leuven.
The Kangxi-Verbiest Celestial Globe in the Atrecht College courtyard is an exact replica of a 17th century globe made by the Flemish Jesuit missionary and astronomer Ferdinand Verbiest.
Verbiest made the globe for the Emperor of China to help predict the movement of the stars and the timing of eclipses.
The missionary hoped to win favour with the Emperor and persuade him to convert to Christianity. Weighing 3,850 kg, the globe marks the precise locations of 1,888 stars and heavenly bodies.
Three hundred years after Verbiest died, the Chinese government donated an exact replica of the globe to Leuven University.
But the timing could hardly have been worse. The globe arrived in Leuven on 2 June 1989, just two days before government tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to crush the student protests.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
