On the way back from the Picture Gallery, you pass on your L. the Rue Longue des Pierres, down which, a little way on the R., is a small Museum of Antiquities. I do not advise a visit to this. It contains one good brass, and some silver badges worn by ambassadors of Ghent, but otherwise consists, for the most part, of third-rate bric-à-brac.
Most visitors to Ghent go to see the Grand Béguinage. This was originally situated in a little district by itself, close to the gate of the Rabot, where its church, uninteresting, (dedicated, like that of Bruges, to St. Elizabeth of Hungary), still stands; but the site has been occupied by the town for new streets. The present Grand Béguinage lies on the road to Antwerp. It is a little town in miniature, enclosed by wall and moat, with streets and houses all very neat and clean, but of no archæological interest. Yet it forms a pleasant enough end for a short drive. And you can buy lace there. The description in Baedeker is amply sufficient.
Bruges is full of memories of the Burgundian Princes. At Ghent it is the personality of Charles V., the great emperor who cumulated in his own person the sovereignties of Germany, the Low Countries, Spain and Burgundy, that meets us afresh at every turn. He was born here in 1500, and baptized in a font (otherwise uninteresting) which still stands in the N. Transept of the Cathedral. Ghent was really, for the greater part of his life, his practical capital, and he never ceased to be at heart a Ghenter. That did not prevent the citizens from justly rebelling against him in 1540, after the suppression of which revolt Charles is said to have ascended the Cathedral tower, while the executioner was putting to death the ringleaders in the rebellion, in order to choose with his brother Ferdinand the site for the citadel he intended to erect, to overawe the freedom-loving city. He chose the Monastery of St. Bavon as its site, and, as we have seen, built there his colossal fortress, now wholly demolished. The Palace in which he was born and which he inhabited frequently during life, was known as the Cour du Prince. It stood near the Ancien Grand Béguinage, but only its name now survives in that of a street.
The Spaniard’s Castle was long the standing menace to freedom in the Low Countries. Within its precincts Egmont and Hoorn were imprisoned in 1568 for several months before their execution.
During the early Middle Ages, the Oudeburg was the residence of the Counts of Flanders in Ghent. Later on, that castellated building grew out of keeping with the splendour of the Burgundian Princes, and its place as a royal residence was taken by the Cour du Prince, already mentioned, which was inhabited by Maximilian and his wife, Mary of Burgundy, as well as by Philippe le Beau and Johanna of Spain, the parents of Charles V. No direct memorials of the great Emperor now exist in Ghent, his statue in the Marché du Vendredi having been destroyed; but a modern street commemorates his name, and mementoes of him crop up at every point in the city.
Though the Ghenters were rebellious subjects, Charles V. was proud of his capital, and several of his very bad bon mots, punning on the words Gand and gant, have been preserved for us. As Baedeker repeats these imperial jests, however, I need not detail them.