27th Heritage Day Flanders: many people… also online!

An increasing number of people show interest in the buildings and monuments that are exceptionally open to the public on Heritage Day Flanders. This year, the website Openmonumenten.be, which serves as a guide, received a record number of visitors... and managed to handle this massive flow. Hats off to Combell for this great achievement!

600 monuments in 200 cities and municipalities

The 27^th edition of Heritage Day Flanders was held on Sunday 13 September in the whole of Flanders. This year, there was no central theme: everyone who live or work in a monument could open its doors and allow the public to enjoy its exceptional architecture or industrial archaeology.

600 monuments in 200 cities and municipalities took part in the event. So, on that Sunday, people had the opportunity to visit the steam syrup distillery in Borgloon, Ons Huis in Ghent, the Beguinage in Mechelen, the Transfo in Zwevegem, the garden and the tower of the Antwerp Cathedral, and many other impressive monuments.

Peak of 34,000 requests per minute on the website

But how could you know which monuments you could visit? And how could you plan your day? As in previous years, the website Openmonumenten.be played a major role in this context. Via a map of the country and a search function, you could see which monuments were exceptionally open in your area, and get further information about their location, their distinctive features, etc.

Consequently, the website received a lot of visitors, but it managed to handle the massive flow (it had twice as many page views as the year before!) without going down. A first rush on the site was recorded between 9 and 11 AM, when more than 1.5 million requests per hour had been processed without any problem. These were probably the many people who visited the website in order to find information on the monuments, so that they could get ready for this special day. The highest peak was recorded between 10:02 and 10:06 AM, where no less than 34,000 requests have been processed per minute!

A second peak followed a bit after noon, when images of Heritage Day Flanders shown on the TV news attracted a new wave of interested people to the website. And, once again, the site handled this new rush without any problem – an achievement of which Combell can be very proud of.

“This year, visitors could only view our programme online. So, it was absolutely essential for the website to be available without any interruption. Our collaboration with Combell was smooth and open. I soon realised that they would do everything they could to help us make this project a success.”

Isabelle Bernaerts, online communication
Herita vzw

Combell & Herita, a longlasting relationship

Combell has had a close relationship with Herita (the organisation that makes sure that all and sundry can enjoy these monuments) for many years. Not only do we provide Cloud hosting services for the website, but we also sponsor the event, which is very close to our hearts. It is true that Combell is always looking towards the future, in order to be at the cutting edge of technology, but it also takes an interest in beautiful things from the past!