Ghent Audio Walking Tour

The 8 stops

Walk them in order or pick the ones you want. The narration starts when you arrive.

1. 01

   Korenmarkt & St Nicholas' Church · Where the tour — and the city — begins

   The old grain market where Ghent started to matter, built in blue-grey Tournai limestone shipped upriver on purpose. Its church honours Saint Nicholas, patron of merchants — money, goods and blessing in one square.

2. 02

   Belfry of Ghent · A tower built to outrank the church

   Begun in 1313 and built deliberately taller than the cathedral. Inside sat the Secreet, the locked chest holding the charters that made Ghent self-governing — plus a dragon with a very unreliable origin story.

3. 03

   St Bavo's Cathedral — the Ghent Altarpiece · History's most fought-over painting

   The van Eyck brothers' 1432 masterpiece, and one of the most fought-over paintings on Earth: looted by revolutionaries, seized by the Nazis, recovered from a salt mine. One stolen panel has never been found.

4. 04

   Graslei & Korenlei · The harbor that paid for the city

   Ghent's postcard view, and really a receipt. Each façade on these facing quays belonged to a different guild, refaced in whatever style was fashionable — competitive architecture paid for by the wool trade.

5. 05

   Gravensteen · A medieval fortress that never became a ruin

   A full moated castle dropped into the city centre, built around 1180 for the Count of Flanders. It survived by staying useful: courthouse, prison, and — briefly, bizarrely — a 19th-century cotton mill.

6. 06

   Vrijdagmarkt · Where the guilds pushed back

   Not a shopping square but an arguing one. Ghent's guilds assembled here for centuries under Jacob van Artevelde, who allied the city with England over the wool its entire economy depended on.

7. 07

   Sint-Michielsbrug · The view of the three towers

   The best view in Ghent, and an engineered one. The Belfry, Sint-Niklaaskerk and St Bavo's line up in one skyline from this crest — a bridge built specifically to frame the city's own medieval core.

8. 08

   Patershol · The ordinary city behind the monuments

   A village folded into the city — the cramped streets of the old tanners' quarter, laid out for people who made things. After centuries as Ghent's poorest district, its medieval houses now hold its restaurants.