Once one of Belgium’s medieval powerhouses, Ghent today is home to one of Belgium’s biggest universities and a vibrant student population. While it has plenty of pretty canals and gables, it also enjoys a certain amount of urban grittiness, with a welcome splash of creative hipster funkiness.

Ghent is very walkable, and I enjoy strolling through the old town in this extremely Flemish city, where the native language is Dutch – but everyone also speaks English.

I start in a square called Korenmarkt (Grain Market), the center of historic Ghent. This still looks much like it did circa 1500, when this was one of Europe’s greatest cities, bristling with skyscraping towers, rich with art, and thronged with hard-working and prosperous citizens. Back then, Ghent’s population was around 65,000 – n

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