If you are English, you may be unaware that 2016 is the quincentenary of the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia. In More’s native London, the anniversary has passed almost unnoticed, apart from a few low-key events at Somerset House. But the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Flanders has gone to town on it, with a programme of no less than 78 Utopia-themed projects.

Flanders can claim to be the birthplace of Utopia, as More started the book while on a diplomatic mission to Antwerp in 1515 and it was published in Leuven a year later with the help of his humanist friend, Erasmus, who coined the title from the Greek words ou and topos, meaning “not-place”.

The book’s opening has since become a topos of travel fiction: the chance meeting with a voyager from a distant land. The voyager in this case is Raphael Hythlodaeus – Greek for “purveyor of nonsense” – who after sailing to the New World with Amerigo Vespucci has discovered an island with a unique system of government.

More is introduced to this old sea dog after Mass at the Church of Our Lady, now Antwerp Cathedral, by the town clerk Pieter Gillis, a humanist friend of Erasmus. They get talking, More’s curiosity is pricked and the three of them repair to a turf-covered bench in Gillis’ garden to pursue the conversation.