Local guide
A self-guided walking tour of Ghent
A walking route through Ghent built by locals: three hours, the medieval centre, the begijnhof and the old harbour, with the stories behind each stop.
Ghent is a walking city by design. The medieval core is car-light, flat, and roughly two kilometres end to end, which means almost everything worth seeing sits within a comfortable afternoon.
Below is how we would walk it: a loop of about three hours including stops, starting where most people arrive and ending where most people stay.
Start: the three towers
Begin on the Sint-Michielsbrug. Saint Bavo's Cathedral, the Belfry and Saint Nicholas' Church line up in front of you, which is the shot that made you come here in the first place. Walk down to Graslei from there.
Along the water to the castle
Follow the Korenlei north, cross at the fish market gate and the Gravensteen appears in front of you. Ten minutes of walking, eight hundred years of history.
The quiet middle of the walk
Cut south through the Patershol lanes and out towards the begijnhof and the abbey gardens. This is the part of the route where the volume drops and the city feels like it belongs to the people living in it.
Modern Ghent, then a terrace
Loop back past De Krook and the Vrijdagmarkt. Finish with a beer on a square rather than at a monument; the point of a walk in Ghent is that it ends somewhere you want to sit.
Guided, self-guided or free walking tour?
Free walking tours run on a fixed script and a fixed clock, and you share the guide with thirty people. A private guide is the opposite problem: excellent, and you have to book around their calendar.
A self-guided tour sits in between. You walk at your own pace, start whenever you want, stop for coffee for as long as you like, and the stories come through your phone as you arrive at each place.
Get this walk on your phone
We build the route around your time, your pace and what you actually want to see, with a local story at every stop.
Build my walking tourMore Ghent guides
- Things to do in Ghent: what locals actually recommendThe places people who live in Ghent send their friends to: the castle, the canals, the hidden gardens and the bars tourists walk straight past.
- Cycling in Ghent: routes, rentals and what locals doHow to see Ghent by bike: where to rent, which routes are worth it, and the parts of the city that only make sense on two wheels.
- One day in Ghent: an hour-by-hour planA realistic one-day itinerary for Ghent, from morning coffee to the last terrace, written by people who live here.
- A weekend in Ghent: two days, without the queuesHow to spend two days in Ghent: the classics on day one, the neighbourhoods locals actually live in on day two.