10 Best Things to Do in Ghent

The Gravensteen (Castle of the Counts) is the only surviving medieval fortress in Flanders that still sits in the middle of a working city rather than out in the countryside. Built by Count Philip of Alsace in 1180 on the model of Crusader castles he had seen in the Levant, it has been used as a court, prison, weapons factory and cotton mill over 800 years, and was rescued from demolition in 1885 by a committee of Ghent citizens who saw the value of keeping a moated donjon in the middle of town.

Entry is EUR 13 and includes an audio guide voiced by the Belgian comedian Wouter Deprez that has become internet-famous - part serious history, part deliberately deadpan tour, and worth the ticket for the audio alone. The route takes you through the great hall, the count's private chapel, the medieval torture museum in the gatehouse (a working guillotine among the exhibits), and finally onto the crenellated roof for a full 360-degree view of Ghent's three medieval towers. Allow 90 minutes to 2 hours.

The 91-metre Belfry of Ghent, built between 1313 and 1380, is the tallest of the city's three medieval towers and a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Belfries of Belgium and France listing. Originally a symbol of civic power (as opposed to the church's Cathedral or the count's castle), the belfry housed the city bells and the town charters in an iron chest called the Secret. The gilded copper dragon that has crowned the spire since 1377 was blown down four times in five centuries, and the current one dates from a full restoration completed in 1985.

Entry is EUR 11 and includes a lift most of the way up followed by two short flights of stairs to reach the viewing platform at 66 metres. From the top the three-tower alignment - St Nicholas's, the Belfry, St Bavo's - is visible right below you, and on clear days you can see the Ghent University Book Tower designed by Henry van de Velde. The 54-bell carillon still plays every 15 minutes; if you time your visit for the Sunday noon carillon concert (April to September) you can watch the beiaardier at work.

Graslei (Grass Quay) and Korenlei (Corn Quay) are the two medieval quays that face each other across a short bend of the Leie river, and together they form the most-photographed 200 metres in Belgium. Ghent grew rich from grain trade in the 11th and 12th centuries and used these two banks as its main port. The result is a solid wall of guildhouses on the Graslei side - the Free Boatmen's House (1531), the Grain Weighers' House (1698), the Coopers' Guild (1531), the Corn Measurers (1698) - and slightly humbler brick warehouses across on Korenlei.

Both quays are pedestrianised. Locals treat the stone steps of Graslei as the city's outdoor living room in summer - bring a takeaway from Julie's House on Kraanlei or a beer from the Waterhuis aan de Bierkant and sit for an hour watching canal boats slide underneath St Michael's Bridge. The 40-minute canal boat tours depart from the Graslei jetty every 20 minutes in season (EUR 10) and give the best water-level view of the guildhouses.

St Michael's Bridge is the single best free viewpoint in the historic city. Standing at the highest point of the arched sandstone bridge (built 1905-1909, replacing an earlier drawbridge), you get a rare open sightline to all three medieval towers - St Nicholas's Church to the east, the Belfry behind it, and St Bavo's Cathedral in the far distance - lined up like beads on a string. Ghent city planners in the 19th century deliberately widened the surrounding streets to preserve this view, one of the earliest documented cases of view protection in Europe.

Look downriver (north) from the bridge for the Graslei guildhouses on the right bank and the neo-Gothic pinnacles of the former post office (now a shopping arcade, 1910) to the left. The bronze statue of St Michael the archangel on the bridge itself dates from 1912 and was recast in 2001 after the original wore through. Free at all hours, but late afternoon light in autumn is when photographers set up shop. Come after dark when the towers and guildhouses are illuminated in warm yellow.

Patershol is the tight labyrinth of 16th- and 17th-century houses immediately north of Gravensteen Castle - eight narrow cobbled streets, three named after the Carmelite friars who lived here (the paters, hence Patershol, the fathers' hole), a small central square, and about 40 restaurants packed into a district you can walk across in 4 minutes. Once a working-class slum on the edge of demolition in the 1970s, it was saved by a resident-led restoration and now holds most of Ghent's Michelin-recommended kitchens without ever feeling touristy.

Highlights: Publiek (Sint-Widostraat 1), a modern Belgian tasting menu that regularly holds a Bib Gourmand; De Vitrine (Brabantdam 134), butcher's-shop-plus-restaurant; and 't Klaverblad (Corduwaniersstraat 61), the best-value classic Flemish stew and vol-au-vent in the city. The Huis van Alijn folklore museum on Kraanlei 65 (EUR 8) shows domestic Flemish life across three centuries in a set of restored almshouses and is quietly one of the best small museums in Belgium.

Werregarenstraat (also known as Graffitistraatje) is a legal graffiti alley 130 metres long, wedged between Onderstraat and Hoogpoort in the middle of the historic centre. In 1995 the city struck an unusual deal with local street artists: anyone can paint over anything else at any time, no permits, no consequences. The result is a wall that changes completely every few weeks. Ghent's home-grown street artist ROA (whose massive black-and-white animal murals are on walls from New York to Buenos Aires) still occasionally leaves work here.

The alley is technically part of the city street network so it's open 24 hours and free. Bring your own spray can and you're welcome to add your mark - most weekend afternoons in summer there is at least one artist working, and they're happy to explain what they're doing. The far end opens onto Hoogpoort, where the Gerard the Devil Castle (Geeraard de Duivelsteen), a rare surviving 13th-century town house, sits opposite. Combined with Patershol, this is the arty half of Ghent.

STAM is the city history museum of Ghent, housed in the extraordinary Bijloke abbey complex - a former Cistercian nunnery founded in 1233 whose 14th-century oak-beamed refectory has one of the great medieval interiors in Belgium. The permanent exhibition takes you chronologically from the Roman settlement of Ganda through Ghent's medieval golden age (when it was the second-largest city north of the Alps after Paris), the textile boom, the collapse under the Habsburgs, and up to the present-day university city.

The single most impressive object is not a painting but a 40-square-metre aerial photograph of Ghent laid on the floor of the abbey's dormitory, showing every street and building overlaid with historical maps you can walk on. Entry is EUR 11 and the museum is included in the CityCard Gent. Allow 90 minutes to 2 hours; the Bijloke Nursing Hall (used for concerts) and the medieval herb garden in the cloister are worth the visit alone. Free English audio guide via QR code.

The MSK (Museum voor Schone Kunsten) is one of the oldest museums in Belgium, founded in 1798 and housed since 1904 in a neo-classical building in the Citadelpark. The collection covers Flemish and Belgian painting from the 15th to the 20th century and is exceptionally strong on the Symbolists and early modernists - James Ensor's The Skate (1892) and Skeletons Warming Themselves (1889) are the two most-viewed paintings, and the museum holds one of the largest Ensor collections in the world alongside excellent Rene Magritte, Constant Permeke and Leon Spilliaert rooms.

Older highlights include Hieronymus Bosch's The Bearing of the Cross (a masterpiece of grotesque faces, painted around 1510-1516), Rogier van der Weyden's Madonna with Carnation, and works by Frans Hals, Jacob Jordaens and Peter Paul Rubens. Entry is EUR 12 (free for under-19s), or included in the CityCard Gent. The museum sits directly across the Citadelpark from SMAK (contemporary art) - a combined ticket at EUR 20 covers both and is a full day's art if that appeals.

Vrijdagmarkt (Friday Market) has been Ghent's main civic square for 800 years - the place where guilds held meetings, where every count of Flanders swore his oath to the citizens, and where public executions once took place under the plane trees. The bronze statue of Jacob van Artevelde (1863), the medieval brewer-turned-mayor who allied Ghent with England during the Hundred Years War, dominates the centre. The Friday market for which the square is named still runs every Friday morning from 07:30 to 13:00 with 100-plus stalls of Flemish produce and antiques.

Around the square is Ghent's best beer circuit. Dulle Griet on Vrijdagmarkt 50 famously requires you to leave a shoe as deposit for the giant 1.2-litre Kwak glass. 't Galgenhuisje just off the square is the smallest pub in Ghent (12 seats). The Trappistenhuis on Brabantdam 164 stocks all 12 authorised Trappist beers on tap, a rarity even in Belgium. For a proper geuze or kriek, walk five minutes to Waterhuis aan de Bierkant on Groentenmarkt with its 150-plus Belgian beer menu.