James Tucker in Cov

I was in Belgium again last weekend, and this time took a day-trip to Ghent, which is a little North-West of Brussels, but is a thoroughly Flemish town. Like Bruges, it peaked in the 13th century, and remains a tourist site largely due to the buildings and history of that period. Unlike Bruges, it's a fair-sized town in its own right, and has more going on than just the tourist industry. As a result, it's not quite as picturesque, but there's more to do there, and it's more surprising when an aristocrat's castle pops up on a side street.
The main focus of the town, like Bruges, is the town tower/carillon/safehouse, though this one is not attached to a great hall like in Bruges. Instead, the hall adjoining was started in the 1300s and finished in the 1900s. The great tower does have some companions, though, those of the church of St Nicolas and the Cathedral of St Bavo. St. Bavo's contains a huge Van Eyck altarpiece from the early 1400s, which we got to see. Like so many great churches I've seen in the Netherlands and Belgium (Leiden, Utrecht), St Bavo's has been through some rough times and been rebuilt since. In this case, it has brick ceiling vaults from the 16th C, as apparently the entire roof fell in at this stage. There was substantial work going on in any case; the entire choir was off-limits while we were there.
Ghent has a castle built as much to intimidate the town as to protect it, and a couple of nobles' houses meant to shelter the rulers from the people. It also has some interesting communal and guild buildings along its riverfront- for weighing and storing grain, and for regulating trade, mainly. The grain stores, the really old buildings, do look their age, but also look really Dutch, with gables and stepped frontages.
Like the hall in the main square, the Stadt-house had to be finished after a long gap due to the decline of the city's fortunes. It was started in one style (flamboyant gothic) and finished in another (cod-neoclassical). Like a lot of additions to older buildings, the new style was ground-breaking, different, and conveniently, cheaper. Without all the stonemasons carving small statues and filigree, the look of the building was mainly down to one man- the architect.