ABSTRACT
In Belgium, the awareness of and interest in ghost signs has emerged at different times and for different reasons in different parts of the country. In 2003 the Brussels-Capital region was a pioneer, listing two interwar ghost signs as monuments, Teinture Alsacienne for fabric dye and Sano for hair dye, as early as 2004 (Registre du patrimoine protegé s.d., p. 1207). The town of Charleroi in the Walloon region followed in 2010, publishing an extensive book entitled De la pub plein les murs, which documented around 200 remnants of advertising murals in the town and its suburbs (Paquet 2010). But until 2012, because of the Belgian regions functioning independently, Flanders was unaware of these developments in the heritage field. In the Flemish region of Belgium, government interest in ghost signs was virtually non-existent before the year 2012.
