Any visit to Ghent should include time to walk around Gravensteen Castle, the nineteenth century renovation of the Castle of the Counts. We visited as part of a train trip through Belgium and as the map shows, the castle occupies a central part of this canal bound town. My second and more detailed visit was as part of a road trip around Belgium, detailed in my travel blog here.
Visiting Gravensteen Castle
As you can see from the map above, the castle is centrally located in this Belgian town. There are hordes of cafes nearby (make a point of eating proper Belgian waffles!). There is the option of an audio tour or just wandering around the castle. Entry times and prices are here.
My Experience
Well, hands up here, my first visit to Gravensteen Castle was a fake. As we were travelling with friends I didn’t think it was fair to drag them around something they weren’t interested in for a couple of hours so we didn’t actually go in. We did a circuit of the castle at night and again in the daytime. It is actually difficult to get a complete photo of the castle as the surrounding buildings hem it in quite well.
The castle was originally built to make the merchants of the town have any second thoughts about independence merely because they did all the work and generated the income for the local nobility! It then became a court and prison and eventually a cotton mill. At the end of the nineteenth century the state bought the buildings back to save them from demolition and the Gravensteen Castle you can now visit is a nineteenth century romantic restoration.
On my second visit I actually go around the interior and it was well worth it. There is an organised route that weaves up and down floors and in and out of the buildings to ensure you see the best the castle has to offer. I was lucky to visit on a sunny day in February 2025 when there weren’t many other tourists but the light was good.
There is a surprising amount to see and it is crowded inside the walls. The concentric defences are impressive and the moat must have helped too. There is a large display of medieval arms and armour inside the castle which is certainly worth seeing.
Gravensteen Castle Photo Gallery
History
The Gravensteen (Dutch; literally “Castle of the Counts”) is a medieval castle at Ghent, East Flanders in Belgium. The current castle dates from 1180 and was the residence of the Counts of Flanders until 1353. It was subsequently re-purposed as a court, prison, mint, and even as a cotton factory. It was restored over 1893–1903 and is now a museum and a major landmark in the city.
References
The Visit Ghent website with opening information is here.
The official website is here and there is an excellent history of the castle.
The very brief history above is copied from the Wiki page here.