Ghent is the Flemish city that has it all but shows off less than its neighbours. It has the canals and medieval heritage of Bruges, but with the energy of a big university city where people actually live. It is no stage set for tourists. Its historic Graslei and Korenlei quays are lined with guild houses reflected in the waters of the Lys, making one of the most beautiful city views in Europe. Above the old town rises its striking skyline of three Gothic towers.
This is home to one of the great masterpieces of art history: 'The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb', the Van Eyck brothers' great altarpiece in St Bavo's Cathedral. Right in the centre stands a real medieval castle with a moat, the Castle of the Counts of Flanders. And among these monuments there is a young, alternative and creative scene, with bars, street art (including the famous graffiti alley), festivals and a strong vegetarian culture.
This guide covers the essentials of Ghent in a practical, friendly way: St Bavo's Cathedral and the Mystic Lamb, the Belfry, the Graslei and Korenlei quays, the Castle of the Counts, a boat trip on the rivers and the major museums. Few cities combine the greatness of Flemish art with the energy of a place that doesn't live off its past but lives alongside it.
Ghent grew up where the Scheldt and the Lys meet. In the 7th century the missionary Saint Amand founded two abbeys there (St Bavo's and St Peter's), and the settlement grew around them. Its name comes from the Celtic 'ganda', meaning confluence. In the Middle Ages it grew spectacularly as one of Europe's largest textile centres. In the 13th and 14th centuries it became one of the most populous cities north of the Alps after Paris, with tens of thousands of people making a living from the woollen cloth trade. Its powerful guilds led many revolts against the Counts of Flanders and the kings of France to defend their freedoms, which forged a strong, rebellious and independent spirit. Emperor Charles V was born here in 1500, though he later punished his home city harshly for an uprising in 1540. After centuries of decline, Ghent came back during the Industrial Revolution as a major textile centre (it was nicknamed 'the Manchester of the Continent'). Today it is a lively university and cultural city with exceptional medieval heritage. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The great historic cities of Flanders —Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Mechelen— were, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, among the richest in Europe, the cradle of the Flemish Primitives, of great trade and of the art of Van Eyck and Rubens.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Ghent was born where two rivers meet. Its name derives from the Celtic term 'ganda', which means precisely 'confluence', referring to the point where the river Lys (Leie) flows into the Scheldt (Schelde). That crossing of waters, inland in Flanders but connected to the sea by river, would be the key to its history: trade, transport and a strategic position of the first order.
The origins of the settlement are tied to religious life. In the seventh century, the missionary Saint Amandus, the evangeliser of Flanders, founded two abbeys in the area that would be fundamental: St Bavo's (Sint-Baafs) and St Peter's (Sint-Pieters). Around those monastic centres, and around river trade, a population grew. Like the whole Flemish coast, the region suffered Viking raids in the ninth and tenth centuries, as the Norsemen came up the rivers, which forced the settlements to be fortified.
Under the protection of the counts of Flanders, and thanks to its privileged location, Ghent established itself between the tenth and eleventh centuries as an expanding centre of trade and craftwork. The wool trade and the emerging textile industry laid the foundations for what, in the centuries that followed, would turn this city at the confluence into one of the largest and most powerful in all of Europe north of the Alps.
Between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Ghent reached a greatness that is hard to imagine today. The city became one of the biggest centres of the textile industry in Europe, specialising in weaving high-quality woollen cloth from wool imported mainly from England. Thousands of weavers, fullers, dyers and other craftsmen worked for a trade that exported across the continent. At its peak, Ghent reached some 60,000 inhabitants or more, which made it, after Paris, one of the most populous cities in Europe north of the Alps, bigger than London at the time.
That wealth and that concentration of craftsmen forged a proud, powerful and deeply rebellious city. Ghent's guilds defended their liberties and privileges tooth and nail against the counts of Flanders and against the kings of France, who wanted to control the region. The city staged numerous revolts. The most famous was led by Jacob van Artevelde, a wealthy citizen who in the 1330s and 1340s, during the Hundred Years' War, became the strongman of Ghent and manoeuvred to preserve the vital wool trade with England, going so far as to align the city with the English king against France. Artevelde was murdered in 1345 by his own fellow citizens in one of the frequent internal struggles.
Dependence on English wool and the social tensions between guilds and patricians made Ghent a turbulent city, with the Vrijdagmarkt (Friday market) as the usual scene of assemblies, proclamations and confrontations. That untameable spirit, that character of a city that would not be governed easily, would shape its relationship with power for centuries and is still part of Ghent's identity today.
The fifteenth century brought Ghent, along with the rest of Flanders, into the orbit of the dukes of Burgundy, and with it an extraordinary artistic flowering. In 1432 one of the supreme works in the history of art was completed for St Bavo's Cathedral: 'The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb', the great polyptych by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, a founding work of oil painting, of revolutionary realism and luminosity. Ghent was thus written for ever into the history of world art.
In 1500, in the Prinsenhof palace, the city saw the birth of one of the most powerful figures in history: Charles of Ghent, who would become Charles I of Spain and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, sovereign of an empire 'on which the sun never set'. That the most powerful man of his time was a Ghenter did not spare the city his anger. In 1539-1540, Ghent rebelled against the heavy taxes imposed by the emperor to finance his wars. Charles V crushed the uprising in person with exemplary harshness: he executed the ringleaders, abolished the city's privileges, imposed a humiliating public penance on its notables (who had to parade in their shirts with a noose around their necks, the origin of the nickname 'stroppendragers', noose bearers, which the people of Ghent now claim with pride) and ordered a fortress built to keep watch over it.
That punishment symbolised the subjugation of proud Ghent to Habsburg power. Shortly afterwards, the city would be caught up in the wars of religion and in the revolt of the Low Countries against Philip II. Like Bruges and the other cities of the south, Ghent finally remained under Catholic and Spanish rule, while the north gained independence as the Republic of the United Provinces. A period of relative decline began, compared with the centuries of splendour.
After centuries of relative stagnation, Ghent was profoundly transformed again with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, which in the city was once more tied to textiles, though now mechanised. The key episode has a name of its own: Lieven Bauwens, a Ghent industrialist who at the end of the eighteenth century pulled off a famous act of industrial espionage. At a time when England banned the export of its advanced textile machinery under severe penalties, Bauwens managed to smuggle out, piece by piece, a 'spinning mule' and take it to Ghent, as well as recruiting English workers.
With that technology, Ghent industrialised at great speed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, filling up with cotton mills, chimneys and workers. The city became the largest centre of the textile industry in continental Europe, to the point of being nicknamed 'the Manchester of the continent', in reference to the English cradle of the Industrial Revolution. That vigour brought wealth but also the harsh conditions of industrialisation: crowded workers' quarters, exhausting shifts and child labour.
It is no accident that Ghent was also a cradle of the Belgian labour and socialist movement. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the city saw the birth of powerful cooperatives, unions and workers' organisations (the imposing Vooruit building, today a cultural centre, was the headquarters of the socialist cooperative). Ghent also founded its university in 1817, which would become a great centre of learning and an engine of the city. The industrial legacy left its mark on the urban landscape, with old factories and docks that in recent decades have been converted into housing and creative and cultural spaces.
The twentieth century brought Ghent the ups and downs common to Belgium: the two world wars and the German occupation, from which the city came out without the devastating destruction suffered in other areas. In 1913, Ghent had hosted a World's Fair that drove its urban modernisation. With the decline of the old textile industry in the second half of the century, the city had to reinvent itself, and it did so by leaning on two great assets: its historic heritage and its university.
Over recent decades, Ghent has restored and made the most of its exceptional medieval centre, with a pioneering pedestrianisation policy (the old town is now largely car-free) and a famous 'light plan' that lights its monuments artistically at night, winning international awards. Unlike Bruges, which lives intensely off day tourism, Ghent has managed to keep a balance between the visitor and a city life of its own, strongly shaped by its tens of thousands of students, who give it a young, alternative, creative feel.
Today Ghent is a vibrant, cosmopolitan city: a cultural capital with renowned festivals (the ten days of the Gentse Feesten in July are among the biggest in Europe), a pioneer in vegetarian food, with a booming art, music and design scene, and at the same time the guardian of treasures such as Van Eyck's Mystic Lamb and of a first-rate medieval ensemble. A rebellious city in its history and a creative one in its present, Ghent perhaps embodies better than any other the Flemish mix of great heritage and authentic life: a city that does not live off the past, but with it.
