31 facts about Bruges
Bruges is a small Belgian city that, in the Middle Ages, was a commercial and financial powerhouse of this part of Europe. At the time, it was one of ...
Ghent is one of Belgium's most visited cities by tourists. This beautiful old Flanders city combines dignity, beauty, culture, and creativity. It is among the oldest cities in Europe, where you can feel the atmosphere of Paris, Venice, Amsterdam, and Bologna.
It is the capital of East Flanders, a province in the Flemish region (one of Belgium's three federal regions).
The Leie has its origin in Lisbourg, France. In Ghent, Belgium, it flows into the Scheldt and has access to the North Sea via the Ghent-Terneuzen Canal.
Among them, the largest are Sint-Amandsberg and Gentbrugge.
As of 2014, it had a population of more than 251.000 or 1607 people/km2.
The people of Ghent speak the Ghent dialect, which has been heavily influenced by French (at the end of the 19th century, French was spoken in Ghent by 20% of the population). To date, the Ghentian language contains a great many French words, and they also pronounce the "r" voice peculiarly.
In ancient times, the area of present-day Belgium was inhabited by Celts under the rule of the Romans. They also settled the region of present-day Ghent.
He began his evangelization from Ghent, where he was not well received at first, but eventually, his work bore fruit. Amand established many monasteries in the Flanders area.
Amand arrived in Ghent by boat, but when he wanted to go ashore from it, the residents threw him into the water. The monk was not discouraged, he sailed on and stopped at the place where the Sint-Pieters monastery was later built. There, he settled and prayed assiduously for the conversion of the pagans. When a condemned man was hanged in Ghent one day, Amand took his body off the gallows and restored him to life in his monastery. According to other sources, he brought back to life a woman who had hung herself from her veil. When the townspeople saw this miracle, they began to be baptized en masse.
These monasteries became the most important in Flanders. The city grew around them.
In his youth, he was known for his carefree, boisterous, and selfish life. He married and had a daughter, Agletrudis. His wife's untimely death, his daughter's extraordinary piety, and a sermon preached by the monk Amanda caused him to convert. He sold all his possessions and used the money for the monastery in Ghent that Amanda was building and moved there. He became a Benedictine monk and, after some time, a hermit. At first, he lived in a hollowed-out tree trunk, and later in a cottage built in the forest. He died a natural death and was buried in Ghent, in the monastery that today bears his name.
This painting is considered the opus magnum (the most outstanding work in the artist's oeuvre) of medieval painting.
There is also a Rococo pulpit by Laurent Delvaux from 1745.
Between 879 and 883, the Vikings ransacked both monasteries, and the city ceased to exist.
Baldwin II “the Bald” built fortifications in Ghent on the left bank of the Leie. Residents gathered there and the first market - today's Groentenmarkt - was established. The town around the market developed rapidly, and both monasteries resumed their activities before the year 1000. St. Dunstan, the abbot of Glastonbury Monastery, found refuge in Sint-Pieters Monastery. A fortress was also built, which in time developed into Gravensteen Castle - the seat of the Counts of Flanders.
It is estimated that between 60.000 and 65.000 people lived within the city walls.
This meant independence and privileges for the city, the preservation of which the residents had to fight quite often over the centuries (the first uprising broke out in 1379).
The city was granted the privilege of a storehouse, which ordered any merchant passing through Ghent with grain to set aside 1/4 of his cargo for sale at the nearby grain market (Korenmarkt). The city grew rapidly richer, and its political importance increased. The Gravensteen fortress was then built (1180), not to defend the city, but to protect the count from rebellious craftsmen.
More than 60% of Ghent's families profited from it.
These wealthy families built public places like hospitals and charitable institutions. New monasteries were also established in the city: the Augustinians, Carmelites, Dominicans, and Friars Minor. For unmarried women and widows, two large beginages (a complex of houses with a small church or chapel and a hospital, an isolation room for the infectiously ill, stables, a chicken coop, a brewery, gardens, and meadows) were built thanks to Countess Joanna van Constantinopel - Sint-Elisabeth and Onze-Lieve-Vrouw ter Hoye.
It was there that the van Eyck brothers created the Altarpiece of the Mystic Lamb in 1432, and it was there that Hugo van der Goes (master of Dutch Renaissance painting, the most prominent artist of the generation of so-called Dutch primitivists) worked. The city had many scholars (Erasmus of Rotterdam), but also many centers where one could receive education (about 300 students attended the gymnasium), and private lessons were common.
The city had theater societies and clubs for the townspeople. Printing was also developing significantly there.
Disgruntled officials and workers organized strikes, as a result of which Charles V Habsburg stripped the city of its privileges and the right to exercise authority over areas outside the city walls. He confiscated all city property, and the symbol of the city's independence, the Roeland bell, was taken down from the bell tower. The city had to pay a huge fine.
They were followed by 50 of the biggest rebels, also barefoot, wearing white shirts and with nooses around their necks - as a sign that they deserved the gallows for their rebellion against the emperor. They had to kneel before the emperor and beg for forgiveness. To this day, the residents of Ghent are called stroppendragers - those who wear the noose.
To this day, a parade of stroppendragers takes place every year in the city center during Gentse Feesten. Now, passing with a noose around one's neck is an honor available only to members of the Stroppendragers guild.
Beginning in 1559, heretics were burned at the stake almost every month. The reaction to these atrocities in the Netherlands was the so-called Iconoclast Revolt (an uprising in which Reformation supporters destroyed altars, paintings, liturgical vessels, etc., in Catholic churches), during which Ghent was particularly affected. Threatened was the Ghent Alterpiece: Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, which miraculously managed to be saved. The conclusion of the so-called Ghent Pacification brought religious peace between Protestants and Catholics.
During this time, the first theological university was established in the city, which today is part of Ghent University.
About 15.000 residents left the city at that time.
It was he who commissioned works for the city from Rubens, Van Dyck, and the sculptor Jeroom Duqquesnoy.
It was used by some 50.000 people a year, and one of the most prominent passengers was Czar Peter the Great of Russia.
Sugar mills and the first real factories not related to the cloth industry appeared in the city. A new opera house in Kouter Square, founded by industrialists, opened in 1737.
The signing of the so-called Treaty of Ghent, ending the Second British-American War, also took place there.
The textile industry was mechanized, thanks to a spinning machine design smuggled from England - the Spinning Jenny.
In 1874, streetcars appeared on the streets - horse-drawn at first, and electric since 1905.
The exhibition was held in a specially built complex. At that time, the Sint-Pieters railway station, the Flanders Palace Hotel and many of the city's monuments were also built.
After World War I, Ghent became a city of culture and entertainment. It began organizing, among other things, the Gentse Feesten and the Midday Fair, which are held annually to the present day.
Ghent had its radio station in the 1930s, and Ghent University became the first university in the country to teach in Dutch. In 1938, one of the professors at this university - Corneille Heymans - was awarded the Nobel Prize.
On January 1, 1945, one of the largest air battles of the end of World War II, known as the Battle of Ghent, took place over the Sint-Denijs-Westrem airfield near Ghent. Polish air squadrons 302, 308 and 317 took part in the battle.
About 28.000 people study at the university alone. Many foreign students study in the city.
The mainstay of the economy is the textile, electrical machinery, chemical, leather, and food processing industries. It is a major flower breeding center.
They are very characteristic of the skyline of this city: the tall bell tower called the "dragon tower"–The Belfry of Ghent from the 14th century, a UNESCO monument, St. Nicholas Bell Tower (one of the oldest and most famous landmarks in Ghent), and Saint Bavo’s Cathedral (the cathedral was the site of the baptism of Charles V - Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation from 1519 to 1556 - in1500).
