Cobble Gobble

ENDE

Flanders · Old Town

Ghent

A self-guided walking tour of the Ghent Old Town, every street in two days.

Every street on the menu.

Every street in the Old Town of Ghent is a line of dots you collect by walking it. I have been lying in one of them for six hundred years and I am still not finished.

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At a glance

Plan your walk.

Distance
34.0 km
Time
about 9.5 hours
Streets
199
Steps
9 streets with steps
Start point
Gravensteen
Phone needed while walking
no
Works offline
yes
Expires
never

The Old Town

Every street, drawn.

Every lane inside that line is a course. The circles are fruit.

Landmarks

What I would eat first.

Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.

  • Gravensteen 1,500 points

    A grey fortress sitting in the middle of a shopping street with water still round it. Take the wall walk. From up there the whole tub of an Old Town is laid out below you and you can see exactly how little of it there is. One way in, water round the rest, and the shops starting where the water stops. Nothing about that arrangement is normal.

  • Belfort 500 points

    Climb it. On the way up you pass the bell chamber, and the bells in there are not small. Stand under them when they go and you feel it through the floor more than through the ears. The balcony at the top is the only place on this level where the whole walk makes sense at once.

  • Dulle Griet 500 points

    It lies out in the open on a square named after it. No glass, no ticket, no rope. Rust red, absurdly heavy, sitting at about ankle height in the middle of a city that walks past it every day. Put a hand on it, then read the label. It is a much stranger object than it looks.

  • Sint-Baafskathedraal 500 points

    The east end of the level. Do not stop in the nave. Underneath it there is a crypt older than anything standing over it, and in a side chapel hangs a panel painting that people cross a continent for. Go and stand in front of it. Nobody is timing you.

  • Sint-Niklaaskerk 500 points

    Grey-blue stone, and it grows straight out of the market it stands in. Go inside and look straight up at the crossing. The lantern above it is hollow and drops daylight into the nave, so nobody ever had to hang a lamp there. The cheapest lighting scheme on this level, and the oldest.

  • Design Museum Gent 250 points

    From the lane it is a townhouse with a very good door. Walk in and the back of it is not a townhouse at all. The whole point of the place is the seam where the old rooms stop and the new ones start, and you can only see that from inside. There are also a great many chairs. I have opinions about chairs.

  • Geeraard de Duivelsteen 250 points

    Dark walls, a row of small turrets, and its good face turned to the water rather than to the street. Stand on the far side of the Reep and look across. From the pavement in front you get a wall. From the water you get the reason somebody bothered.

  • Hotel d'Hane-Steenhuyse 250 points

    On the Veldstraat, which is the busiest shopping street in town, and you will go straight past it unless somebody tells you. Look for the one doorway in the row that is far too grand to be selling anything. What is behind that door is not a shop and it is not small. Hiding a thing that size in your busiest street is a trick I admire.

  • Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 250 points

    A pale eighteenth-century front on the Koningstraat, at the quiet north-east end of the level where the crowds have given up. It is not a museum and it does not want your ticket. Read the name over the door slowly, all of it. It is the longest name on this level and every word in it is doing a job.

  • Stadhuis Gent 250 points

    It takes up a whole corner and then it keeps going. Walk the Botermarkt side, turn into the Hoogpoort, and the same address is still beside you. Two street names, one house. I measure everything in street length, so by my reckoning this is the biggest single thing on the level.

Eating

Actual food.

Two rivers arrive here at the same time and the city ate what they brought. When the water got too dirty for fish in the nineteenth century, the kitchens picked up a chicken and kept the old name on the pot. The square in the middle is still called the vegetable market. In 2009 the city put a meat free day on its own calendar and other cities copied it, which tells you where the appetite is going.

Meat and fish

  • Gentse waterzooi

    Broth, vegetables, potatoes and cream, with fish in it or chicken. The fish came first, out of the Leie and the Scheldt, until the nineteenth century made the rivers too filthy to fish. The word is written down in 1642 and it only means simmering in water. Ghent named its best dish after the cooking method.

    Sources: Visit Gent, Lekker van bij ons (VLAM), Stad Gent

  • Gentse stoverij

    Beef and onions, cooked long. The Ghent version puts kidney and liver in as well, and lays a slice of bread spread with Tierenteyn mustard on top so it melts into the sauce and thickens it. It comes with chips. Bread used as a tool. I respect that.

    Sources: Visit Gent, Lekker van bij ons (VLAM), Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov)

  • Cuberdon (neuzeke)

    A purple cone with a hard sugar shell and a syrup middle that runs when you bite it. A Ghent chemist botched a batch of syrup in 1873, found a crust had formed on it by itself, and sold the failure instead of binning it. The whole city calls them little noses.

    The classic middle is set with gum arabic from the acacia. The big maker's recipe also uses pork gelatine, so ask at the stall if that matters to you.

    Sources: Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov), VRT NWS, Visit Gent

Vegetarian

Two, and the reason is the calendar rather than neglect. The old meat free things here come out of the bakery. The savoury vegetarian answer in Ghent is not old at all: the city put a meat free Thursday on its own calendar in 2009 and other cities copied it, so the vegetable cooking you want is on today's menus rather than in the archive.

  • Gestreken mastellen

    A soft ring roll of flour, milk, butter, sugar and cinnamon. Split it, butter it, sugar it and press it flat in a hot iron until it caramelises, and that pressed one is what gestreken means. Ghent gets the iron out during the Gentse Feesten. Carmelites were stringing these on a cord to have them blessed nine hundred years ago, and the dough has barely moved since.

    Sources: VRT NWS, Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov), Visit Gent

  • Gentse sneeuwballen

    A cloud of whipped vanilla under a chocolate shell so thin it cracks, finished with icing sugar. It turned up in 1913 for the world exhibition here, when chocolate was expensive and using almost none of it was the whole trick, which is why it was known as the working man's praline. You can only get them from September to March, because heat is not their friend.

    Sources: Visit Gent, Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov), De Vlaamse Ondernemer (DVO)

Vegan

  • Frieten uit het frietkot

    Fried twice, once to cook them and once for the crust, out of a hut that exists for nothing else. Belgium has about five thousand of those huts, and the craft of frying in them went onto the Flemish heritage inventory in 2014. A country that files its chip shops as heritage has its priorities in order.

    The fat is the question. Some houses still fry in beef fat and plenty have moved to vegetable oil, so ask at the hatch before you order.

    Sources: Immaterieel Erfgoed Vlaanderen (Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed, Vlaamse overheid), Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov)

  • Kroakemandels

    Dried peas soaked overnight, fried in oil, salted hard and eaten out of a paper cone. Ghent called them the caviar of the working man. Women carried them from cafe to cafe in baskets, the last of them stopped, and now almost nobody sells them. Cafe Folklore still does, all year round. I like a snack you have to hunt.

    Sources: Visit Gent, VRT NWS, Immaterieel Erfgoed Vlaanderen (Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed)

  • Gentse mosterd

    Mustard seed, vinegar, water, spice and salt. Nothing in that jar ever had a face. The house has stood at Groentenmarkt 3 since 1867 and sells it over the counter there. Belgium had close to a hundred mustard makers once and is down to about ten, so buy it where it is made.

    Sources: Industriemuseum Gent, Lekker Oost-Vlaams (Erov), Visit Gent

Late breakfast

  • Madam Bakster come for the one thing: the cake without butter or sugar

    Brabantdam 142

    A coffee house out on the Brabantdam where the cake carries no milk, no butter, no eggs and no sugar, and still behaves exactly like cake. It began as an online shop run by a student and grew into a room with chairs in it. Come for the breakfast end of the day, because the doors close at six.

    • Monclosed
    • Tueclosed
    • Wed10:00–18:00
    • Thu10:00–18:00
    • Fri10:00–18:00
    • Sat10:00–18:00
    • Sun10:00–18:00

    Sources: Visit Gent, NewPlacesToBe, Het is de Merckx

Afternoon coffee

  • Mokabon the old one

    Donkersteeg 35

    An Italian from Padua opened his roastery and shop in this lane in the late 1930s, and a few years later cleared space inside it for a coffee room. The dark red tiled floor, the wooden counters and the neon Salon du café lettering are still the ones the heritage register describes. A room nobody has redecorated since about 1950 is exactly my sort of room.

    • Mon09:30–17:30
    • Tue09:30–17:30
    • Wed09:30–17:30
    • Thu09:30–17:30
    • Fri09:30–17:30
    • Sat10:00–18:00
    • Sunclosed

    Sources: Agentschap Onroerend Erfgoed, Stad Gent, Made in Oost-Vlaanderen, Visit Gent

  • Full Circle Coffee Zuid come for the one thing: the filter coffee

    Zuidstationstraat 5

    The first coffee bar in this country with no cow in it, out past the old south station where the tourist map gives up. Your latte comes with oat milk because there is nothing else on offer, the pastries come from a bakery down the road, and the filter coffee is the actual reason to walk over. Retro armchairs, a sunny terrace, and a house that made one decision and then furnished around it.

    • Mon08:00–18:00
    • Tue08:00–18:00
    • Wed08:00–18:00
    • Thu08:00–18:00
    • Fri08:00–18:00
    • Sat09:00–18:00
    • Sun09:00–18:00

    There is a second branch on the Koningin Astridlaan. This card means the one at Zuidstationstraat 5.

    Sources: Visit Gent, NewPlacesToBe, Koffietje.nl

  • Café Labath where locals go

    Oude Houtlei 1

    A corner house by the old art school with windows the size of doors, so the whole room is daylight. They pour their own label, roasted for them by a Belgian roastery, and on a weekday there is breakfast and a sandwich. Nobody takes bookings here, which is the correct way to run a room where people sit and read.

    • Mon08:00–17:30
    • Tue08:00–17:30
    • Wed08:00–17:30
    • Thu08:00–17:30
    • Fri08:00–17:30
    • Sat09:00–17:30
    • Sun09:00–17:30

    Sources: Visit Gent, Koffietje.nl, NewPlacesToBe

Dinner

  • De Frietketel come for the one thing: the fries

    Papegaaistraat 89

    A chip hut on the Papegaaistraat that fries everything in palm oil, which is the sentence a vegan wants to hear at a counter like this, and the tartare sauce comes in a plant version too. It was voted the best friture in Flanders in 2017 and took a Belgian vegan award for fast food two years later. Order one size smaller than you think. The portions are the biggest in the city and I say that as a stone with an appetite.

    • Mon17:00–22:00
    • Tue11:30–14:00, 17:00–22:00
    • Wed11:30–14:00, 17:00–22:00
    • Thu11:30–14:00, 17:00–22:00
    • Fri11:30–14:00, 17:00–23:00
    • Satclosed
    • Sun17:00–22:00

    Sources: Visit Gent, BE Vegan vzw, Made in Oost-Vlaanderen

  • Epiphany's Kitchen Gent where locals go

    Burgstraat 10

    Comfort food with the vegetables moved to the front: a pizza built on cauliflower or on sweet potato, and everything on the board plant based as standard. It sits on the Burgstraat among the antique shops, two minutes off the route the postcards take. Vegetables doing the work of comfort food is a trick I approve of.

    • Monclosed
    • Tueclosed
    • Wed18:00–22:00
    • Thu18:00–22:00
    • Fri12:00–14:00, 18:00–22:00
    • Sat12:00–14:00, 18:00–22:00
    • Sun12:00–14:00, 18:00–22:00

    There is a second Epiphany's in Antwerp. This card means the Ghent one on the Burgstraat.

    Sources: Visit Gent, NewPlacesToBe, BE Vegan vzw

Checked 5 September 2026.

Name origin

Why it is called Ghent.

Ghent is Ganda with the edges chewed off. Ganda is a Celtic word for a confluence, so this city is named after the plain fact that two rivers arrive here at the same time. That is not a name. That is a set of directions, and nobody has ever bothered to replace it.

Sources: stad.gent; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Why here

Somebody stood here and decided.

Look at the water first. The Leie comes in from one side, the Scheldt from the other, and the old core sits on both banks of both. Dry ground here means sandy rises that get to about fifteen metres above sea level, which in this country passes for mountains. The counts put their castrum between the Leie and a few of its side branches, on the ground that stays out of the wet. Everything you walk today is arranged around that one decision.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Why then

When the first stone went down.

Ghent has no founding date. It has two beginnings that eventually ran into each other. Two monasteries went up at the start of the seventh century and pulled everything else towards them, and a small trading post appeared by the Scheldt somewhere in the late eight hundreds. By 941 the traders had put up a place of worship of their own, which is how you know they meant to stay. Out of that trading post grew one of the largest inland cities in north-west Europe.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Who ruled

Everyone who thought they owned this.

I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.

1100–1384

The counts of Flanders. They built their residence on the west bank of the Leie, in the richest place in their own county, which is a sensible address if you live off what passes through. Around 1100 the town got a belt of water round it, part river and part dug, and the count's castrum sat between the Leie and a few of its side branches. From there the counts held the town and the town held the trade.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1384–1794

Burgundy, and then the family that inherited Burgundy. Philip the Bold held Flanders from 1384, and the dukes kept a palace in town. Charles V was born in it in 1500, which makes him the most local emperor Ghent will ever get and did Ghent no good at all. In 1540 he rewrote the city's charter, abolished the old abbey and put a new stronghold on the ground where it had stood.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1794–1814

France. From 1794 the whole of the southern Netherlands was under French authority, and Ghent was made the capital of the Scheldt department, one of nine set up in 1795. Churches and convents were sold off as national property or simply taken down. What moved into the gap was the factory: Lieven Bauwens brought in machines, and other people copied him until the town had changed its trade for the first time in centuries.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1814–1830

The Netherlands. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna put the southern and the northern Netherlands together into one state under King William I. That government suited Ghent rather well, and in 1816 the city was given a state university out of it. The arrangement lasted fifteen years, which is not a length of time I am able to take seriously.

Sources: www.belgium.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1830–

Belgium. A provisional government declared independence on 4 October 1830 and Ghent has been in one country ever since, which on this list counts as an extraordinary run of nothing happening. It was also among the first Belgian cities to be given railway lines. Rails are the one kind of street I have never managed to eat.

Sources: www.belgium.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

The emblem

What the shield means.

Ghent's shield is a silver lion on black, tongued red, crowned and collared in gold. Flanders is full of lions, and at the size of an app icon one lion is every lion. So the icon is the belfry instead: a rectangular tower with four polygonal corner turrets under pointed caps, and, sitting on the top since 1377, a red copper dragon nearly three metres long. That is the only weathervane I have ever been jealous of.

Sources: nl.wikipedia.org; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Emblem: Original artwork for Cobble Gobble — no third-party source

Three facts

Three things I know about this place.

  1. This level has a name of its own. Around 1100 a belt of water went round the town, part natural watercourse and part dug ditch, and it left the Ghent ground shaped like a tub: eighty hectares, with the Reep on the east, the Ottogracht on the north-east, the Leie on the north-west, the dug Houtlei on the west and the dug Ketelgracht on the south. That tub is the Kuip, and the Kuip is what you walk here. By about 1300 there was a second circuit thirteen kilometres long around six hundred and forty-four hectares, so the Kuip is the small old core sitting inside the big one.

    Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

  2. Ghent is nowhere near the sea, so Ghent dug itself one. Between 1251 and 1269 the city cut a canal forty-five kilometres long out to Damme on the Zwin, about seven years with spades in the ground, and called it the Lieve. It was the first artificial link anybody here knows of, and for centuries it was the crucial connection between this town and open water. Forty-five kilometres of digging to shorten a journey. That is exactly how I do my arithmetic.

    Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be; inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

  3. People were standing on this ground a very long time before anyone thought of a city. Flint tools near the Sint-Pietersabdij put travelling people here around 9600 to 9000 BC. On the Goudenleeuwplein, a square you cross on this level, they turned up flint and pottery from the Neolithic. The densest Roman finds sit at the river junction and cover the first century through to the fourth. Under the paving there is more paving. It goes down a good deal further than you would expect.

    Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Street words

What the names on the signs mean.

straat
The plain word for a street. Veldstraat, Zonnestraat, Koestraat, Wolfstraat, Oliestraat: field, sun, cow, wolf, oil. Whatever happened to be at the end of it on the day somebody needed a name.
steeg
An alley, and this Old Town is stitched together out of them. Donkersteeg is the dark one, Haringsteeg the herring one, Okkernootsteeg the walnut one, Boeksteeg the book one. Three of those four are food.
markt
A market square, and this Old Town has thirteen of them. Botermarkt sold butter, Korenmarkt grain, Vismarkt fish, Kalvermarkt calves, Poeljemarkt poultry, Pensmarkt offal, Vlasmarkt flax, Vogelmarkt birds. Thirteen squares, thirteen courses.
lei
A street that runs along the water. Graslei and Korenlei face each other across the Leie and end up on every postcard. Ajuinlei is the onion one, Kraanlei had the crane, Predikherenlei the preaching friars. If a name ends this way, the street has a wet side.
berg
A hill, in a town built on wet sand. Zandberg, Kalandeberg, Oranjeberg, Zilverenberg. The highest ground anywhere in Ghent is under thirty metres, so read every one of these as a claim rather than a measurement.
Sint-
Saint. Sint-Baafsplein, Sint-Niklaasstraat, Sint-Jacobsnieuwstraat, Sint-Michielshelling, Sint-Veerleplein, Sint-Joriskaai, Sint-Kristoffelstraat. Follow one of these and you nearly always arrive at a church, which makes it the most reliable way to navigate here.

The size of it

Walk it in a day: Ghent in numbers.

Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.

  • 199streets
  • 1,752dots
  • 26.9km of street
  • 34.0km on foot
  • 9.5hours at a stroll

Nearby

Old Towns close to this one.

The game

Your first city is free.

Cobble Gobble is a walking game for iPhone. Claim any city as your free one. Every other city is a one-time purchase you keep for good, Family Sharing included, and a city you own plays fully offline.

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