18 April - The International Day for Monuments and Sites

The issue of scientific heritage is today placed before the international community. It appears as a relatively new challenge, both for its definition and for its assessment criteria. It has become commonplace to recall that this heritage is today under-represented on the World Heritage List. Indeed, few cultural properties explicitly acknowledge this dimension as being dominant or simply even present in the analysis of their outstanding universal value. In fact, for ICOMOS, the concept of scientific heritage has so far only been one of the cultural dimensions associated with a cultural property, often a minor, even implicit, dimension.

The Thermo Technical Institute of the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven, Belgium) was constructed for the technical education of its engineers. During the erection between 1926 and 1931 the Institute accommodated a lab for mechanics, electricity and thermal machines. The didactic machine collection served during fifty years for the preparation of many engineer students for the industry. Since some decades the Institute lost its educational meaning but now functions as a ‘Museum of Historical Engines’.
During eighty years the Institute developed into a monument of industrial archaeology and at the same time as a surprising part of the scientific and academic heritage of the University of Leuven.

The name of Lavrion, attributed to the mountainous mass of this metallurgical region, seems to have prevailed after the age of Homer. It most probably derives from the word lavra or lavri, meaning a narrow paved road and, for Homer, the corridor, the transversal road.

Xenophon himself, the historian of Lavrion par excellence, narrates:

"Ότι πάνυ παλαιά ενεργά εστί, πάσι σαφές• ουδείς γάρ ουδέ πειράται λέγειν, από ποίου χρόνου επεχειρήθη..."

...These routes had existed long ago.