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.

Abbey of St Bavo.

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The ruins of the former Sint-Baafsabdij (Abbey of St Bavo) are an oasis. They rest practically in the middle of Gent, mere minutes away from the current Sint-Baafskathedraal (St Bavo Cathedral), and literally next door to the confluence of the river Schelde (Escaut) and its tributary, the Leie (Lys). The fork of these two rivers is believed by many to be not only the first site settled in the area, but also the origin of the city’s older name, Ganda, derived from the Celtic word for confluence. The site certainly is among the first where Christianity found a foothold in Flanders.

Sometime around 629, the Frankish missionary Amand (c. 584 – 675) arrived here on his first attempt to baptize the local "pagans", who did what most people accused by a total stranger of not "living right" would do, (allegedly) tossing the proselytizing bishop back into the river that had brought him hither. Undaunted, Amand performed the "miracle" of resuscitating a hanged criminal, which so impressed the locals to abandon their previous beliefs they not only demanded to be baptized, but immediately set about destroying their former places of worship.

Amand went on to found not only the Sint-Baafsabdij, but also the Sint-Pietersabdij (Abbey of St Peter), together with his disciple Bavo (622 – 659) — formerly a nobleman known as Allowin of Hesbaye (Haspengouw). A tearaway slacker in his youth, Bavo "atoned" for his loutish years by becoming a monk and disseminating his wealth. Venerated as a saint upon his death, the abbey where he died was renamed after him in the ninth century. Not long after that, Sint-Baafs was sacked by Norsemen on one of their first murderous vikings in the area.

Setting up camp in Sint-Baafs during the winter of 879-880, the Norsemen went on to pillage Sint-Pieters as well. Further fortification of the sites, and fervent shipbuilding in a nearby wharf, didn't discourage additional raids, and by 883 the Norsemen had effectively razed both abbeys to the ground: practically wiping the emerging settlement of Gent off the map. However, Sint-Baafs was re-erected in the tenth century under the watchful eye of Arnulf the Great (c. 890 – 965), third Count of Flanders, and continued to flourish throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Sint-Baafs last period of prosperity began at the turn of the fifteenth century, having been renovated and redecorated under abbot Raphaël de Mercatel (1437 – 1508). By that time, the population of Gent had reached some 65,000 inhabitants, supposedly making it the second largest city in Europe after Paris. However, some 900 years after it was founded the abbey's end was nigh: in 1539, Emperor Charles V decided to personally strike down the revolt brewing in the city — which his sister, Queen Mary of Hungary, had failed to quell — over the tax increases being squeezed out of its inhabitants to fund the Emperor's various wars.

Taking the revolt as a personal affront, Gent being Charles' city of birth, the Emperor had large parts of the original abbey buildings and its impressive Romanesque church — the very place Charles had himself been baptized — demolished, in order to make way for what would become infamously known as the Spanjaardkasteel (Spanish Castle). Constructed for the sole purpose of besieging and maintaining control of the rebellious city, Charles' Italian-style citadel was large enough for a garrison of 2,500 men. Completed in 1545, the citadel was itself demolished between 1827 and 1834, while what remained of the once prominent abbey was retained as ruins. In 1887, when the Belgian state handed the site over to the city of Gent, the city's lapidarium was installed there.

In 2007, a neighbourhood organisation — Buren van de abdij (Neighbours of the Abbey) — were granted permission by the city to open the closed off ruins to the public once a week, with volunteers guiding tours, exhibitions, and hosting concerts each Sunday between April and November. Today, five metre high hornbeams evoke the pillars of the demolished church, while a concrete podium marks the place where its altar once stood, effectively a multipurpose outdoor stage in a lush park setting. The ruins and remains of the abbey are also home to some 150 different species of wild plants, making the site quite unique among Europe's urban parks.

(More images of the ruined Abbey of St Bavo.)