Gentse Winterfeesten · Ghent Winter Festival
Ghent Christmas Market Audio Tour
The Winterfeesten run straight down the three squares this tour starts on.
Half the tour is inside the festival footprint. Ghent lights its medieval core properly in winter, and the view from Sint-Michielsbrug — the Belfry, Sint-Niklaaskerk and St Bavo’s lined up in one skyline — is the reason to walk it after dark rather than at noon.
- Market stops
- 4 of 8
- Walking time
- 1.5–2 hours
- Distance
- 1.8 km
The stops inside the market
The Gentse Winterfeesten occupies Sint-Baafsplein, Emile Braunplein and Korenmarkt. These stops of the Ghent tour stand on those squares — you can hear them without leaving the stalls.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The other 4 stops carry on past the market. See the full Ghent tour.
What the stalls are standing on
The cathedral at the end of the market holds the Ghent Altarpiece, the most stolen artwork in history. One panel, taken in 1934, has never been recovered — and the market queues past its chapel every evening in December.
When it runs
The Gentse Winterfeesten runs for roughly three weeks from mid-December into the first days of January.
Check the city’s own listing for this year’s exact dates and opening hours. The audio tour works whether the market is on or not.