Major Seminary, Mechelen

It is located on the two-acre (8,861 square metres) site of what was formerly the Major Seminary in Mechelen, an institution for the training of Catholic clergy in the archdiocese from 1595 to 1970.

Since 1936, increasingly extensive parts of the site have been listed with the status of a protected monument.

The seminary was first located in a boarding house founded by Jan Standonck in 1500 for poor youths being educated at the city's Latin School.

[2] Candidates for the priesthood were to complete their humanities at the Latin School before receiving theological education at the seminary.

[1] The seminary was closed down by the government of the Austrian Netherlands in 1787, pursuant to a decree of Emperor Joseph II, but reopened in 1789 after the Brabant Revolution.