The Université catholique de Louvain is Belgium's largest French-speaking university.
It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve, which was expressly built to house the university, and Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Tournai and Namur.
Since September 2018, the university has used the branding UCLouvain, replacing the acronym UCL, following a merger with Saint-Louis University, Brussels.
The original University of Louvain was founded at the centre of the historic town of Leuven (or Louvain) in 1425, making it the first university in Belgium and the Low Countries. After being closed in 1797 during the Napoleonic period, the Catholic University of Leuven was \"re-founded\" in 1834, and is frequently, but controversially, identified as a continuation of the older institution.AB In 1968 the Catholic University of Leuven split into the Dutch-language Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which stayed in Leuven, and the French-language Université catholique de Louvain, which moved to Louvain-la-Neuve in Wallonia, 30 km southeast of Brussels.
Since the 15th century, Leuven/Louvain, as it is still often called, has been a major contributor to the development of Catholic theology.
The UCLouvain is often ranked among the world's top 50 institutions for the study of philosophy and top 20 institutions for theology and religious studies
