Leuven is a town with a rich history and full of strange folk tales. Perhaps the strangest of these is the story of Paep Thoon, the famous city jester. Paep, formally called Anthoon vander Phalizen, was the son of a local pastor. His nickname refers to him being the son of a priest (paep), and Toon is short for Anthoon. Paep was allegedly a hunchback and worked at his father’s church as an organist and carillonneur. However, Paep was certainly remarkable and these qualifiers are not what made him famous….
