The Palace of Academies is the headquarters of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique (Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium) and its Flemish counterpart, the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten (KVAB).

The history of the Royal Academy is closely linked to that of the Royal Observatory of Belgium. Adolphe Quetelet, the first director of the Observatory, was also president and then permanent secretary of the Academy.

To celebrate the bicentenary of our institute, the Collège Belgique of the Royal Academy of Belgium, in collaboration with the Royal Observatory of Belgium, is organising a series of four lectures on the history of our institute (in French). This series will take place on 2, 3, 8 and 9 December 2026 at 5 p.m. on all dates.

A day of lectures in Dutch will also take place on 18 November 2026 in the Rubens Auditorium of the KVAB.

More information about the programme for these lectures will be published in the coming months.

Photo : statue of Adolphe Quetelet. Credit : EmDee (shared under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license). Source : Wikimedia.