• Under reserve of further guidelines by the National Security Council, the State Archives re-opens its reading rooms in two phases:

1. As from 26 May 2020, students and Ph.D. students whose academic activities require the use of archives are granted access to the reading rooms of the State Archives upon appointment and under the condition that they wear a face mask. Reservation of workspace in the reading room must be made by e-mail to the State Archives in question at least 2 workdays before the visit. You can find the contact details of our services on our website. Students must produce a valid student ID and Ph.D. students must show proof of their doctoral studies at a scientific research fund, a university or a scientific institution. 
2. Provided that the public health situation in the country allows it, all reading rooms of the State Archives will re-open as from Tuesday 16 June 2020 for the general public.

• The State Archives shall of course take all necessary precautions to ensure the security of both visitors and staff. The number of available workspaces in the reading rooms depends on the individual configuration of the premises and shall be limited accordingly.
• In the meantime, we continue to provide minimum service to the maximum extent and to increase our online offer of archives and finding aids.
• In order to somewhat alleviate the effects of the long closure of our reading rooms, all scheduled repository inventorying activities for 2020 are cancelled.
• All public events, such as colloquia, group visits, receptions, book presentations, training, etc. organised by the State Archives until 15 June 2020 included are cancelled.
• Transports and deliveries will progressively resume on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, provided that security distances can be respected.

You can stay informed about further developments via this website and via Facebook.

The State Archives holds a real treasure of cartographic materials, but handing out original maps and plans in the reading rooms bears the risk of deteriorating the state of conservation of these documents. Indeed, repeated unrolling and rolling-up of these maps and plans that are sometimes of considerable size has taken its toll on the documents, which called for a large-scale digitization campaign. In recent years, some 60,000 maps and plans were digitised. This number increases steadily. Roughly 44,000 of these digital images have been processed and are now available for research.

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Two hundred years ago, on 18 June 1815, the famous battle of Waterloo was fought. The State Archives conserves hundreds of linear metres of records from this period that can be searched with archive guides, inventories, historical studies, etc. A number of events are also organised this year in relation with the commemorations.

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In order to let the general public discover the rich archival heritage on the First World War, the State Archives launched a new dedicated website in August 2014: http://14-18-wallonie.arch.be. It is filled with a variety of interesting documents, including letters, posters, photographies, minutes, etc. The website is in French.

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