Although not immediately as picturesque as Bruges, its great rival, Ghent has a lot of things to reveal to its visitors.

Sitting on the junction of the Leie and Scheldt Rivers, Ghent was the principal seat of the counts of Flanders and the largest town in western Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the mid-14th century, Ghent had become Europe’s largest cloth producer, importing wool from England and employing thousands of people. The flourishing textile industry enabled the city to acquire certain privileges and prosperity reflected today in its remarkable architectural heritage.

Ghent still musters a string of fine Gothic buildings and many delightful and intimate streetscapes, with antique brick houses woven around a skein of narrow canals. The city’s star is undoubtedly the Saint Bavo’s Cathedral - or at least its principal treasure, Jan van Eyck’s remarkable “Adoration of the Mystic Lamb” – but it’s well-supported by the Saint Nicholas’s Church, with its extraordinary soaring arches, and the medieval castle of the Counts of Flanders, Het Gravensteen, that still sits in the heart of the city. Close by are exquisite medieval guild houses and enjoyable museums.

The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
“The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb , painted in 1432 and attribute to brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck, which is on display in the Saint-Bavo’s Cathedral is considered as a high point in the 15th century Flemish Art.

The polyptic is composed by twelve different oak panels – the extreme left lower panel “The righteous judges” was stolen in 1932, never found again and replaced by a copy .The detail of the composition is absolutely amazing, the hair of the characters are painted one-by-one, each stone of the virgin’s crown reflects the light and botanists have identified with a magnifying glass 300 different varieties of vegetables in the landscape But the most remarkable point is the mystery , the beauty and the emotion that inspired this universal masterpiece, both very realistic and full of faith

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles V, the famous Charles-Quint, King from 1516 to 1556 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 to 1556 was.born in the Flemish city of Ghent in 1500.
Charles -Quint spent his youth in the Low Countries (modern-day Benelux). His mother tongue was French, the language of the aristocracy and he famously said: "I speak Spanish to God , Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse ."Elected Holy Roman Emperor in June 1519, he built an empire “in which the sun does not set.’” In 1556, Charles abdicated giving his personal empire to his son, Philip II of Spain and the Holy Empire to his brother, Ferdinand He retired to the monastery of Yuste in Spain where he died in 1558.