The Ghent List

I was born in Zottegem, twenty kilometers south of Ghent, which means Ghent was never a destination for me. It was the city: where I saw my first concerts, drank my first proper beers, and learned that a place can be 600 years old and still feel like it was built for the people living in it today. I now spend my working life showing travelers the Belgium beyond the postcards, as the founder and guide of Belgium’s Wanderlust, and Ghent is where I send everyone first. (Read my Navigator Q&A for Yolo Journal here.)

Here is what visitors get wrong: they treat Ghent as Bruges’ understudy. In truth, it is the livelier sibling. A university city of about a quarter million people with one of the largest car-free centers in Europe, medieval guild houses reflected in two rivers, and a food scene that answers to students and locals rather than to tour groups. Hubert and Jan Van Eycks’ “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb,” arguably the most influential painting in European history, hangs here, ten minutes’ walk from a graffiti alley that repaints itself weekly. That range is the whole city in one sentence. And it is an easy 45 minutes from Antwerp, 30 from Bruges, and 30 from Brussels, which makes it the best base in Belgium.

EAT

Takes Thyme – Creative, seasonal lunch cooking and my standing answer to “where should we eat in Ghent?” I keep coming back.

Mémé Gusta – Belgian grandmother classics done properly: stoverij, shrimp croquettes, comfort on a plate. Take visitors here first.

Oh!MA – Asian comfort food, packed with flavor. Where I go when I want a bowl of something generous.

Maison Elza – Brunch with one of the prettiest interiors in the city. Come early on weekends.

Le Botaniste – Plant-based, quick, and light. The right lunch between long dinners.

Soul Kitchen – Vegan cooking good enough that nobody at the table mentions it is vegan.

De Zwarte Zee – Waterside seat, long menu, easy afternoon. Where the canals earn their keep.

Soup’r – Cheap, fast, and surprisingly good. The local office crowd’s open secret at lunch.

DRINK

Herberg De Dulle Griet – A beer café with hundreds of Belgian beers and one famous ritual: order the Max and you surrender a shoe as deposit for the glass. Theatrical, but the cellar is serious.

’t Dreupelkot – A tiny canal-side bar pouring house-made jenever, the grain spirit Belgians drank before beer made us famous. Dozens of flavors, no stools to hide on.

Trollekelder – The beer bar facing Sint-Jacobs church where I take people who want to talk their way through the Trappists and lambics, bottle by bottle.

EXPLORE

The Patershol – A knot of cobbled medieval lanes that went from tanners’ quarter to the city’s best eating district without losing its scale. Get lost here on purpose.

Graslei and Korenlei at dusk – The medieval port, guild houses lit gold over the water, the whole city sitting on the quays with a drink. Ghent’s living room.

Saint Bavo’s Cathedral – Home of the Van Eyck brothers’ Ghent Altarpiece (1432), whose central panel, the “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” (1432), changed European painting. The altarpiece survived six centuries of theft, war, and one still-missing panel.

Design Museum Gent – Reopened in October 2026 after four years of work, with a new wing by Carmody Groarke and ATAMA. Come for a collection that runs from Art Nouveau to today, and save time for the Loft on the fourth floor, where the view across the Ghent rooftops makes its own case. It sits on Jan Breydelstraat, the same street as The Fallen Angels, so the two make one easy stop.

Gravensteen – A twelfth-century count’s castle with a moat, in the middle of a modern city. Climb it for the rooftops.

Werregarenstraat – The sanctioned graffiti alley that repaints itself week by week. Proof this is a city that belongs to its young people as much as its history.

The water – See the city once from a boat on the Leie. Ghent was built to be entered by river, and it still shows its best face to the water.

SHOP

Tierenteyn-Verlent – Mustard made in the cellar and pumped from a wooden barrel into your jar, in the same shop since 1790. The most Ghent purchase possible.

The Fallen Angels – Two floors of old Belgium on Jan Breydelstraat, a few steps from the Graslei: vintage postcards, film posters, biscuit tins, holy cards and toys, gathered over decades. The best souvenir shop in the city, because nothing in it was made as a souvenir.

Oorcussen – Right on the Vrijdagmarkt, Dries Van Noten and Sofie D’Hoore next to a tight edit of international names. Belgian design, shown in the city that has always bought it.

The Vrijdagmarkt – Friday market square since the Middle Ages, ringed with cafés. Come Friday morning for the market, any other day for the square itself.

STAY

Hotel Verhaegen – Four rooms in an eighteenth-century mansion, run in person by owners Marc and Jan. Staying here is like inheriting stylish Ghent relatives.

1898 The Post – Moody, romantic rooms in the old post office tower above the Graslei. The city’s prettiest address.

Hotel Harmony – Family-run in the Patershol, with a small heated pool and some of the warmest service in the city. My pick with kids.

Pillows Grand Boutique Hotel Reylof – A grand boutique stay a short walk from the center, when you want space and calm around the sightseeing.

DAY TRIPS

Ghent is the best base in Belgium, precisely because the rest of the country is so close. With a driver or a guide you can do the castle and abbey country of the Meuse Valley around Dinant, the WWI battlefields and the evening Last Post ceremony in Ypres, or even a three-country day through Liège, Aachen, and Maastricht, all as day trips and all back in Ghent for a late drink. This is what I do all season with Belgium’s Wanderlust: private, all-inclusive custom days for up to eight guests, built around the party in the car.