Abstract: Nations share (the idea of) a common past. What about Belgium? Does state reform goes along with diverging memories about the Belgian past? Is this a part of the Belgian problem? Or is it a wider phenomenon of the falling apart of collective national identities in a globalizing world? Must we care about a common national memory? According to the French historian Pierre Nora we are witnessing a world-wide upsurge in memory. Belgium is no exception. New museums are being built; Heritage and Open Monuments days are a huge success; heritage sites and living history events even more so; every day a new digital source collection is presented; political commissions seek the truth about events that happened long ago (Patrice Lumumba, Julien Lahaut); Belgian authorities offer apologies for their responsibilities in past crimes (the mayor of Antwerp to the Jewish community, the Belgian Prime Minister to the Rwandese Tutsis). This memorialism finds its deeper reason in the search for a sense of belonging and a collective consciousness. Because of the rapid and continuous changing of the present what Nora calls the acceleration of history and the growing feelings of uncertainty about the future, people are seeking comfort in the past. Traditions, customs, landscapes, terroir, monuments etc. les lieux de mémoires in Noras words , realms of memory, offer access to the past. How does this general and world-wide pattern fits in with the actual Belgian state of affairs? The future of the Belgian nation-state has become very uncertain. Does this provoke memorialist activities concerning the Belgian past? Not at first sight. On the contrary, the Walloon, Brussels and Flemish regions and communities develop their own memorialist activities. This can be seen for instances in the commemoration of the centenary of WWI. Does this provoke diverging memories? If so, are these diverging memories part of the crisis of Belgian identity? These questions are raised in the contributions by Nico Wouters and Laurence van Ypersele on ...