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This photograph is labelled as "restoration of a Belgian tower" and taken between 1920 and 1930, although both pieces of information might be wrong. However, it must have been taken before 1935 because the photographer died in that year and that piece of metadata is likely to be correct.

restoration of a Belgian tower

I'm trying to find out what tower is it and its location. I've tried checking images of Belgian towers to no avail - maybe I haven't tried hard enough.

The image can also be seen in Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Restauraci%C3%B3_d%E2%80%99una_torre_medieval_en_una_ciutat_belga.jpeg and in its original location at http://mdc.csuc.cat/cdm/singleitem/collection/ffmgausachs/id/171/rec/284 with some metadata.

A bit of context:

Some thousands of old public domain images were recently imported from a Catalan archive to Wikimedia Commons. Most of them were properly identified but there is a big lot with lacking or wrong information - that's the reason I wrote that the location and date should be taken with a grain of salt. Thanks to a very dedicated Catalan Wikipedia editor and some crowd-sourced expertise, identification of those advances fairly well. However, some of the images - like this one - were taken in other places of Europe far away from Catalonia and I think that identifying landmarks on them will be easier for a more international audience. Since it's a voyage photograph (although the voyager passed away in 1935) I think it's on topic here, a good addition to the site and an interesting challenge for some users, while providing a valuable little piece of information for the benefit of common humankind knowledge by allowing the image to be properly identified in Wikimedia Commons.

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    After seeing how well it has worked, I'm going to post more questions about unidentified photographs from the same archive, but I'll take care not to flood the site with them.
    – Pere
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 9:39
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    If you have a link to an other site (or part of Wikimedia) where people can go to help you, please add it to this or to the next question you post. Someone might go there.
    – Willeke
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 14:15
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    @Willeke - There isn't a good list of photographs from that archive that need better identification. The whole collection is at commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/… and there is a user page with work in progress at ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuari:Isidre_blanc/proves/… , where help is welcome but that is just a selection and only a few images there remain to identify - and most of them are hard to identify Catalan places. If I make a better list I'll post it here.
    – Pere
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 18:45
  • Pere, I was asked to give you this link and ask you to translate it to Catalan: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel%C2%B7l%C3%AD_Gausachs
    – Willeke
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 19:31
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    @Willeke - Not a good list but I can link my notes for the next questions ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usuari:Pere_prlpz/… . If any of them is identified before I post it here, I'll need to search a new one.
    – Pere
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 19:46

1 Answer 1

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This is not in Belgium, but in Béthune, France, although not far from the Belgian border.

The belfry (the tower) is originally from 1346, but was destroyed during the first world war and rebuilt between 1921 and 1923. You can find it on Google Streetview from almost the same point as your photographs have been taken.

Beffroi de Béthune

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

How did I find it? Since the time period matches, I assumed that the tower was being rebuilt after the first world war and googling for images of belfries rebuilt after the first world war returned a picture of this tower as one of the first hits.

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    Outstanding job! I also did a bit of googling but wasn't even close :)
    – Midavalo
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 1:54
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    Great job. You even did the kind of search I would have expected if I had asked in History.SE instead of here. I hope nobody minds that I accept the answer without waiting the customary 24 hours because I can't see how a better answer could be produced.
    – Pere
    Commented Jul 11, 2020 at 8:56
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    @Pere: we don't follow the 24 hours rule on Travel.SE when there is a correct; good and detailed answer.
    – Taladris
    Commented Jul 12, 2020 at 3:00
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    It's that awesome Burgundian-like architecture... good one
    – Fattie
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 15:02
  • impressive search-fu, Tor !!!
    – Fattie
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 15:02

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