Airports.

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It's easy to get the impression that the German air force is responsible for constructing all of Belgium's national airports. The first, at Haren, was opened following the First World War, on the opposite side of the German-built Zeppelin airfield at Evere — using the same field as the military. The second, current national airport, Brussels Airport at Zaventem, dates back to the Second World War, when — once again — German occupiers constructed an airport at Melsbroek, near the Belgian military backup airfield Steenokkerzeel. (Urban legend has it that the locals directed the Germans to Melsbroek, as it was an area often enveloped in fog.)

By 1948, civilian aviation in Belgium had outgrown Haren aiport, and Melsbroek was designated as the new national airport. However, in 1956 history repeated itself, as the Belgian authorities decided to construct a new airport in preparation for the 1958 World's Fair, utilising the same runways, but with the new terminal buildings located in Zaventem. Unable to shake its martial past, the old civilian airport is now used by the Belgian air force (as Melsbroek Air Base), sharing its runways with the current civilian airport at Zaventem — making this perhaps the only airport in Europe at which one can land and take-off from runways originally constructed by German occupational forces.

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The most common urban myth surrounding Sweden's largest airport, Stockholm-Arlanda, is that its name is pun on the Swedish verb "landa" ("to land"), and that it was chosen by a naming contest held by Sweden's largest weekly magazine. While a contest was in fact held when construction commenced of new airport in the Swedish capital region, capable of handling intercontinental traffic, the contest jury chose to endorse the name originally suggested by the projects toponymist. Derived from Arland, the archaic name of Ärlinghundra hundred where the airport is situated, the new airport's name had an "a" added to be analogous with other Swedish place names ending in "-landa" ("land of"), making Arlanda in fact the "Land of Streams" (with "Ar-" being an ancient Swedish form of "å", the noun for "stream".)

Despite the somewhat droll name, Arlanda merely lands one in one of the dullest airports in Europe, where the myth of the progressive, organised Swedish society is done in by something as rudimentary as lack of clear signage. (Even smaller airports in Sweden mange to make the transition from the international to the domestic terminal smoother.) Hence its main claims to fame remain having once been listed as an emergency landing site for NASA's space shuttle, the Jumbo hostel (a decommissioned Boeing 747-212B converted to a 76 bed hostel), its policy to never close due to snowfall, and that Sweden's first Starbucks franchise opened here last February.

The Little Béguinage.

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In the middle of Gent stands a refuge, secluded from the bustling city by the Neerschelde and a high wall and various other structures surrounding it. The main point of entry is a Neoclassical gate, dating back to 1819, its narrow alleys eventually opening up on a courtyard lined with beech and lime trees. The courtyard itself is dominated by a large church, which overlooks some 100 small houses, a small chapel, an administrative building, a hospital, and remnants of a farm — all bearing the name of a saint. This is the béguinage of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Ter Hooyen ("Our Lady of Hay"), more commonly known as Klein Begijnhof, or "the Little Béguinage", one of the best preserved of its kind.

It's one of three such complexes in Gent, one of eighteen in Belgium, all of which are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. (The other Heritage Site entry in Gent is the city's belfry, which is listed with 55 others in Belgium and France.) Though originally laid out in the 13th century on the meadow known as Groene Hooie ("green hay"), from which the béguinage derives its name, most of the current structures date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. Its main church, named for the same "Lady of Hay" as the surrounding béguinage, was built between 1654 and 1658, with a new façade added in 1716.

Most likely named for the priest Lambert le Bègue (Lambert the Stutterer), a self styled Catholic reformer who lambasted the abuses and vices of fellow clergy from his Liège parish, béguinages were semi-monastic religious communities, established across the Low Countries as well as parts of Northwestern Germany at the beginning of the 13th century. Unlike regular monasteries or convents, béguinages didn't require those who sought refuge there to take vows or withdraw from the world. Nor did they have to surrender their property (if they held any), or pay the exorbitant admission fees demanded by other "spiritual" institutions, and they were free to "return" to the world at large whenever they wished.

Perhaps because of this, béguinages tended to attract single women in particular; unmarried or widowed by the various religious wars and crusades that were shattering their communities at the time, or perhaps simply choosing a life of attending to the poor, prayer, and charity after their own fashion. In fact, it's tempting to suggest that béguinages may have provided a viable alternative for women who wanted more out of life than simply becoming some man's chattel. Particularly as the béguines initially supported themselves through manual labour rather than through alms.

Many came to teach the children of town folk, the low nobility from which many of the béguines themselves were drawn — the very segment of society that would one day become the middle class. However, as time wore on, the béguines and beghards (their male counterparts) began relying on begging or rich sponsors to sustain their communities. Soon too, their "unregulated" lifestyle (no to forget the profits they were diverting) sparked the ire of Catholic Church, which set about branding them heretic and — as is its wont — persecuting them.

Despite the church's attempts to stamp them out, the béguinages continued to exist and function well into the 20th century, with the last béguine in Belgium, Sister Marcella, the last béguine of Kortrijk, currently living out her nineties in a rest home. In fact, the Little Béguinage by the lower Schelde endured not only the impounding of religious real estate that followed in the wake of the French Revolution, but also being pawned off on a duke in 1862, before becoming the property of a private organisation in the mid-1920s — with the last remaining béguines inhabiting their modest domiciles well into the 1990s.

Today, the lay sisterhoods little houses have been largely converted into condominiums, offering one story with an attic, sometimes a basement and a small back garden, enclosed by high whitewashed walls. Some of the larger structures, except the church and chapel, have also been utilised as ateliers and galleries. A "gated community" of sorts, the little béguinage is now a semi-cloistered environment for people who wish to retreat from inner city life after 10PM, when it's main gate closes to non-residents.

Rubens House.

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In 1610, after returning from Italy and marrying artist's model Isabella Brandt (1591 — 1626), Flemish diplomat, painter, graphic artist, designer, and collector Peter Paul Rubens (1577 — 1640) purchased a property on what was then Vaartstraat (now the Wapper) in Antwerpen (Anvers). Having specifically received permission from the sovereigns of the Spanish Netherlands to establish his studio in his ancestral home town rather than at the court in Brussel (Bruxelles), Rubens set about altering the residence in subsequent years. Though famous in his own time for his paintings of various religious and mythological subjects, portraits, landscapes, tapestries, and scenes inspired by historical events, he's perhaps now more readily associated with "rubenesque" figures, given his penchant for painting mature, fully-developed women, rather then abnormal, starved wretched wenches of the sort widely idealised today.

In accordance with his artistic ideals, Rubens added a "fully-developed", Baroque portico and studio, a semi-circular 'Pantheon' to house his art collection (one of the largest in Antwerpen at the time), and laid out a garden, all inspired by Greco-Roman antiquity and the Italian renaissance. The new structures gave the otherwise quite traditional 16th century residence the resemblance of an Italian palazzo, and were unequalled in Antwerpen at the time. The façade of the studio (where some 2,500 paintings were produced with the help of the artist's colleagues, assistants, and pupils) in particular demonstrates how the Rubens' stay in Italy influenced not only his paintings but also his ideas about architecture.

Notable among the rare paintings on display throughout the house are Adam and Eve, one of Rubens' earliest known works, finished before his departure for Italy in 1600, and his acquisition of his more familiar expressive style, as well as Henry IV at the Battle of Ivry, one of his last — and unfinished — paintings, revealing the technique and collective effort dedicated to its creation. Equally notable is one of only four self-portraits Rubens painted, dated to around 1630, when the artist was in his early fifties. Apart from its rarity, it also differs from, say, the many self-portraits of Rubens' contemporary Rembrandt, in that Rubens chose to present himself in the guise of the distinguished gentleman diplomat he mainly appeared to have thought himself as, rather than the painter — the Flemish Baroque master — which became his distinction.

After Rubens passed away, his second wife, Hélène Fourment (1614 — 1673) continued to live in the house, even renting it out between 1648 and 1660 to William and Margaret Cavendish, refugees of the English Civil War, who established a riding school there. Once the Cavendishes moved on, the residence was sold by Rubens' heirs. Largely ignored and subjected to various renovations, it was acquired by the city of Antwerpen in 1937 and, after a thorough restoration, opened as a museum in 1946. The reconstructed Baroque garden, restored in the 1940s, was completely relaid in 1993, leaving the portico and the garden pavilion as the sole authentic parts of the 17th century complex — though all the plants currently grown in the garden were known in Rubens' time, including sunflower, tulips, fritillaries (misionbells), and potato plant specimens imported from "the New World" as decorative plants.

A glass pavilion, designed by Stéphane Beel (with Maur Dessauvage and Laurent Ney), housing visitor facilities — such as reception, cloakroom, and shop — separate form the actual residence itself, was constructed on the Wapper in 1999. This elegant solution to the type of space-related problems similar museums face (most historically important residences not having been designed with streams of visitors in mind) allowed the Rubens' residence to remain largely unaltered. The elaborate style of the courtyard, with its myriad of symbolic details, also make it quite clear the the exterior of the residence — facing the Wapper — was of little interest to Rubens. The residence rather gives the impression of being inhabited by someone who enjoyed living surrounded by art and beautiful objects, but had little need or desire for obvious ostentation, and who certainly didn't fit the stereotype of a struggling artist.

(More images of Rubens House.)

The Count's Castle.

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Practically at the centre of Gent stands what for all intents and purposes is a medieval castle: the Gravensteen ("Count's Castle"). The original structure was constructed in 1180, on a site by the river Leie (Lys) that fortified structures had occupied since the 9th century. Yet whether the fairytale building that can be seen and visited here today in any way resembles the original is hotly debated, mainly due to the extensive — some claim "imaginative" — restoration undertaken by the city of Gent in the late 1800s.

Having been constructed by the order of the then Count of Flanders, Philip I (1142 — 1191), the original Gravensteen was modelled on the crusader forts the Count had encountered during the fiasco later known as the Second Crusade. The castle then served as the seat of the Counts of Flanders until formally abandoned in the 14th century, though they rarely spent much time there to begin with, possessing many other castles and houses between which they frequently travelled.

In 1353 the castle housed the city Mint, between 1407 and 1778 the Raad van Vlaanderen (the Council of Flanders, the regions highest legal college) and a prison, before finally being turned into a cotton mill in 1807 — likely the first example of industrial repurposing of any building in Gent. New buildings were erected along the former castle's crumbling walls, parts of which were even recycled as building material for new structures. Inescapably, the decaying Gravensteen became a symbol of abusive power, feudal oppression, horrendous incarceration, and torturous inquisition.

Yet despite calls for its removal, it survived and, beginning in 1894, was subjected to a "romanticizing" restoration, considerably altering the castle to suit 19th century ideas of what the Middle Ages should look like. (Though a decent slice of the real thing can be seen in the torture museum housed in the castle since 2002.) However, as the only remaining medieval castle in Flanders, with a virtually intact defense system, the Gravensteen is among the most visited sites in Gent — if one of the scientifically least examined ones, with no serious archeological research conducted on the structure prior to the 1950s.

The castle is said to have succumbed to invaders only once, in November 1949, when students incensed by the rising price of beer (and the change of policemen's caps from white to blue making them indistinguishable from mailmen and taxi drivers) entered and occupied the Gravensteen. Alas, their siege — now notorious as the Slag om het Gravensteen ("The Battle of the Count's Castle") — proved unfruitful, with prices for the coveted beverages continuing to climb even as the defeated (and presumably quite thirsty) scholars filed out of the Count's old keep. Like so many disillusioned crusaders before them.

(More images of the castle.)

Belgian Fries Museum.

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Let's make it clear once and for all: there really is no such a thing as "French" fries. It may seem futile to protest, but the tremendously popular side dish's origin in Belgium is supported by what little evidence there is. Much of it is on display at the Frietmuseum ("Belgian Fries Museum") in Brugge (Bruges), the first and only of its kind in the world, and in itself indisputable evidence of Belgians' passionate preoccupation with the deep-fried potato strips.

However, it's the Americans — the people responsible for coining the specious misnomer — who have done the most to popularise the dish worldwide. Having themselves become obsessed in the latter half of the 20th century, to a point where only 16 of the 54 kg of potatoes each American consumed in 2006 weren't deep-fried or otherwise processed, they have acquainted the world with fries mainly through their fast food franchises; becoming the world's largest producers as well as consumers of fries in the process.

Unfortunately, their frozen, pre-packaged, pre-fried slices — often dusted with natural or artificial flavours — soaked in animal fats for 15 to 20 minutes, and treated with a sugar solution in order to caramelize the cooking fat to provide the "golden" colour Americans have been taught to expect, have very little in common with fries the inhabitants of the Meuse (Maas) river valley, somewhere between Dinant and Liège (Luik), began supplementing their diet with toward the end of the 17th century.

Genuine Belgian fries, as every Frietmuseum visitor is informed, are made from freshly sliced potatoes, cooked in unrefined beef tallow for six minutes at 130 - 140˚C, then left to rest for ten minutes, before being cooked a second time at 165 - 170˚C for at most another three minutes. While this procedure still results in high absorption of fat and significant reduction in mineral and ascorbic acid content, it makes for a culinary experience far removed from the mushy sticks of lard dished out in North American slop-shacks.

Established by the Van Belle family, who've also created Choco-story (the Belgian Chocolate Museum) and Lumina Domestica (a domestic lighting museum), the Frietmuseum opened to the public in May 2008. It's housed in the Saaihalle (Serge Hall), the oldest building in Brugge displaying a date (1399) on its façade, and though it was expanded in the 15th century to house the Consul of Genova (Genoa), the structure retained much of its original form, and required very little alteration in order to be converted into a museum space.

The museum's first two levels trace the history of the versatile, propitious tuber, from its humble South American origin to its current position as the world's fourth-largest food crop (after rice, wheat, and maize), through its metamorphosis into Belgian fries, and the impact the dish has had on Belgian culture, while its third level essentially is a friet shop. So while it seeks to educate a little through its entertaining displays, the Frietmuseum chiefly provides a venue for savouring the world's best fries — satisfying more than a craving for knowledge.

Book Tower.

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Towering atop Gent's Blandijnberg ("The Hill of Blandijn"), the 64 metre tall, 24 story Boekentoren ("Book Tower"), housing the Gent university library, is surely one of the most remarkable library buildings in the world. Devised in 1933 by Henry Van de Velde (1863 - 1957), as part of a new complex including the library and the institutes for Art History, Pharmaceutical, and Veterinary sciences, it was the Antwerpen native's first public commission in Belgium. An established architect, decorator, industrial designer, painter, and — along with Paul Hankar (1859 - 1901) and Victor Horta (1861 - 1947) — one of the leading proponents of Art Nouveau in Belgium, Van de Velde was a professor at the Gent university at the time, having previously mostly worked in Germany.

The site chosen for the new complex, atop the Blandijnberg, had been settled since Roman times, and would allow the tower to not only dominate the city's skyline, but complement its three "classic" towers — those of the belfry, the St. Bavo Cathedral, and the church of St. Nicholas — which made Gent renowned as the "medieval Manhattan". A fourth tower could've been added in the 16th century, had the megalomaniacal project to make the tower of St. Michael's church the tallest in the land not been aborted by religious wars. Van de Velde saw a chance to not only obscure St. Michael's stump of a tower, but add a structure on the highest ground in the city that would stand not only as a symbol of the university, but also as a beacon of science, wisdom, and knowledge.

However, the university's librarians and administrators were less than taken with the idea, commissioning an alternative, conventional building plan from architect Armand Cerulus (1896 - 1963). Yet Van de Velde managed to get his way, and construction of the tower began in 1936, with structural work and most of the façade finished three years later. To emphasise the building's modern nature, Van de Velde chose to erect a tower of reinforced concrete, relying in particular on the skills of colleague Gustave Magnel (1889 - 1955), the main proponent of prestressed concrete in Belgium. His Laboratorium Magnel vor Betononderzoek (Labo Magnel), dedicated to researching concrete and concrete structures, had been part of the Gent university since 1930. (Magnel also designed the first prestressed concrete bridge in North America, the Walnut Lane Memorial Bridge in Philadelphia.)

Then economic crisis and world war prevented completion of the project, forcing some materials to be replaced with cheaper or more readily available alternatives; Congolese Rosewood and marble replaced the metals, linoleum, and rubber consumed by the war. And although, at Van de Velde's insistence, 1% of the total building cost was dedicated to decoration, only Karel Aubroeck's sculpture De Runenleester ("The Rune Reader") and Jozef Cantré's relief were delivered, while commissions by leading Flemish expressionists Gustave de Smet (1877 - 1943), Constant Permeke (1886 - 1952) and Frits Van den Berghe (1883 - 1939) were unfulfilled. Quite unwittingly, Van de Velde's tower, crowned with an impressive belvedere, also provided German forces with a most excellent surveillance post during their four-year occupation of Gent.

Surviving the war unscathed, the structure remains a splendid example of Van de Velde's modernism, as well as one of the primary examples of interbellum modernism in Belgium, the structure's curved lines, rounded corners and edges perhaps being his most obvious signature. But he also had a hand in creating its black iron window frames, floor patterns, doorhandles, furniture, even radiator covers. Modernist principles guided the design, with — for instance — incidence of light determining the position of reading rooms; the main and the periodical reading rooms faced south and received the most exposure, while the manuscript room faced north, remaining shielded from light.

Home to a unique collection some 48 km long (or nearly 3 million volumes, using Library of Congress classification — though in one librarian's words "not systematically"), the Boekentoren is due to undergo long overdue restoration, the urgent need for which has been recognised for at least the past 25 years. Limited space and inadequate climate conditions have rendered it unsuitable as a repository for its vulnerable and irreplaceable collection, dating back beyond the founding of Gent's first university library in 1819. Not to forget that it also fails in providing a healthy work environment for its 72 employees (62% of whom were women, with an average age of 41 in 2008) and numerous patrons.

In 2005, the university board invested € 30 million (≈ C$ 42.5 million in '05) in the restoration project, though to reach the 2003 estimate of € 41 million (≈ C$ 63 million in '03) individual sponsors were invited to purchase each of the 23 million cm² of the Boekentoren's façade at a rate of € 1 per cm², or one of 352 steps in its staircase for € 250 (≈ C$ 354 in '05) per step. During the restoration, scheduled to take place between 2013 and 2019, the most sensitive parts of the library's collection will be housed in a brand new underground repository, to be constructed beneath the library courtyard between 2011 and 2013. The repository is intended to continue providing a space for storing parts of the collection in optimal conditions even after the main restoration is completed, its three air conditioned floors — the lowest equipped with a sprung floor and doubly high shelves — containing some 40 km of compact book shelves.

What makes the Gent university library's collection unique is its origin in collections of various local abbeys, churches, and monasteries abolished in the wake of the French Revolution, as well as the rapacious expansion undertaken until the First World War, adding private collections and archives, numismatic collections, posters, prints, engravings, and ephemera. Whether storing the sensitive materials underground, while retaining the lending collection in the tower, will change the level of access remains to be seen. Though currently anyone can register as a patron, only librarians and staff have access to the tower (what in library parlance is referred to as "closed stacks"), with requested materials being delivered in small metal baskets by a paternoster.

When the original construction ended in 1942, it left Henry Van de Velde dissatisfied; the finished result clashing with his desire for unity in design as well as materials. It was also considerably smaller, lacking not only some of the original plan's structures (such as the archeological and ethnographical museum) but also many of the minor details he was so keen on (like the specially designed steel furniture). One can only wonder what Van de Velde would've made of the considerable facelift in store for the library, which plans to deposit the majority of its collection in a direction directly opposite of the symbol he helped create — to represent the power of science and the book as a universal medium of communication.

(More images of the Book Tower.)

Additional input by Sarah Polkinghorne.

Botanical Garden.

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Gent's first botanical garden was established in 1797, at the former Baudelooabdij (Baudeloo Abbey), in the wake of Napoleonic conquest and subsequent educational reform, which — among other things — called for the creation of such gardens in cities of Gent's stature. When the University of Gent was founded in 1817, the Baudelootuin (Baudeloo garden) was placed at its disposal, with the professorship in botany linked to the directorship of the botanical garden. It's an arrangement that persists to this day, with the university's Faculty of Science currently acting steward.

Once the garden outgrew its original location, the Botanisch Instituut (Botanical Institute) as it was then known was relocated to its current site, southeast of the then recently-created Citadelpark (Citadel Park). It's occupied that same location since opening up its gates in 1903 onto a new complex consisting of an open air garden, a greenhouse, a palm house, an orangery, and a number of experimental greenhouses, as well as a new institute building.

To meet the requirements of its expanding collection, new greenhouses were constructed between 1931-32, which were in turn replaced 40 years later with a new palmarium in 1970, and three large public greenhouses constructed between 1971-72. A rock garden was added in the early 1950s, while the Gothic Revival institute building was razed and replaced with a Modernist steel, glass, and concrete high-rise which continues to completely dominate the scenery to this day.

The Plantentuin Universiteit Gent (the Ghent University Botanical Garden), as it's known today, is currently home to more than 10,000 plant species inhabiting the 2.75 hectare (≈ 6.8 acre) site, including 4,000 m² (≈ 43,060 Sq Ft) of heated and unheated greenhouses. Three large greenhouses and a succulent house are open to the public, presenting tropical and sub-tropical plants, while over 20 smaller ones are dedicated to research and specialised collections are open only to staff and students.

In the tropical hothouse, banana, baobab, cinnamon, kola nut, mango, and rubber trees can be found, while the sub-tropical hothouse includes specimens of the camphor laurel, citrus, eucalyptus, and pomegranate trees, as well as castor-oil and tea shrubs. The indoor pond of the Victoria greenhouse and its giant water lillies, adjacent to the other two greenhouses, is in turn surrounded by "economic" plant varieties like cacao, coffee, cotton, papaya, rice, and sugarcane.

Hardy plants are grown in the open air garden, dominated by a large pond, arranged into several areas: the rock garden (mountain species and alpine plants), the medicinal, mediterranean, and vegetable gardens, and an arboretum divided into European, Asian, and American "zones" — reflecting the phylogenic relationships between the plant taxa. Additionally, the Faculty of Science houses a herbarium (over 300,000 specimens), and a seed (diaspores) collection, as well as a small botanical and horticultural library (some 500 volumes).

The botanical garden, open throughout the year, is not only a major source of study material for students (including primary and secondary school pupils) of biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, geology, geography, and related sciences. It also lends out plants to other university departments, while its palmarium and Victoria greenhouse in particular are a popular venue for exhibitions, receptions, and serve as the venue in which biology masters students defend their theses.

(More images of the botanical garden.)

Visserij.

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A nowadays largely gentrified, residential area in the middle of Gent, the Visserij ('Fishery') owes much of its character to the revival of the city's once-dominant textile industry. During the Middle Ages, Gent was the centre of one of the first industrial areas in Europe, but centuries of (mainly) religious wars devastated its once-flourishing textile trade and the manufacturing base that underpinned it.

As mechanisation revolutionised textile manufacturing at the end of the 18th century, Gent's surviving textile merchants began erecting new factories at such a rapid pace the city soon became known as the "Manchester of Flanders", turning into the a leading centre of the cotton industry, and employing some 12,000 people by 1816. At that time, most of these factories still relied on power generated by either wind or horse mills.

Then, some enterprising chaps struck upon the idea to utilise the change in water level caused by tides upon the rivers flowing through the city — a difference of as much as a metre, twice daily — to generate power with water wheels. The idea found application along a new canal being constructed parallel with the Beneden-Schelde (or, formally, Neerschelde), quite literally the lower arm of the Schelde river.

By the time the new Visserij canal was dug in 1752, the narrow man-made island it helped create had become a compact industrial zone. Though its name derived from the sea access it provided ever larger vessels the shallower river arm couldn't accommodate, it soon became more closely associated with the numerous factories that had filled it.

Many of these factories were connected to both the Visserij canal as well as the river (hence known as Achtervisserij, the 'hinter-fishery') by subterranean tunnels. Water wheels installed in these tunnels were powered by the water flowing into the canal from the river at high tide. At low tide, the water flow would reverse, returning from the canal through the tunnels, over the wheels, back into the river. The result was a regular, reliable power supplement to the wind and horse mills.

The activity and noise arising from the many factories and mills on this narrow strip in the centre of the city soon made the Visserij known locally as the "Rommelwater" — the 'cluttered waters'. No doubt the pervasive practice of relying on waterways to carry away refuse also helped inspire this bric-a-brac evoking nickname — particularly when steam power replaced the much more environmentally friendly mills and wheels by the end of the 19th century.

Between 1907 and 1909 quays were constructed along the banks of both the Visserij and the Achtervisserij, and the once-industrial island began acquiring the mostly residential character it's retained to this day. Among the few remaining reminders of its industrial past are some of the best-preserved beluiks in the city of Gent — unique residential cul-de-sac alley ways.

Erected by local industrialists, products of the city's rapid industralisation, the beluiks once provided the only affordable shelter for the masses drawn into Gent in search of employment. Though the surrounding waterways no longer act as open sewers, its beluiks no longer home to the working poor, many of the Visserij's structures remain some of Gent's most notable examples of industrial architecture.

(More images of the Visserij.)

With images from the collection of Philippe Bockstael.

Additional input by Nico Smets.