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FrançaisBelgium’s belfries are not ten World Heritage Sites, or thirty-three. They are one, a single serial inscription called the Belfries of Belgium and France that holds 56 towers in total, 33 of them in Belgium and 23 in northern France. UNESCO listed 32 Belgian belfries in 1999 under the name Belfries of Flanders and Wallonia, then in 2005 added the 23 French towers plus the belfry of Gembloux in Wallonia and renamed the whole thing. So a town can tell you truthfully that its belfry is UNESCO World Heritage while the count of World Heritage Sites in Belgium never moves.
That count is 16. The UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Belgium include several other serial inscriptions of the same kind, which is why the number of individual protected buildings in the country runs well past fifty while the site count stays small. The 13 Flemish béguinages are one site. The four boat lifts on the Canal du Centre are one site. The belfries are one site with 56 parts.
This guide picks 10 of the 33 Belgian belfries, the ones that are worth building a day around, and tells you which you can climb, what it costs and how many steps are involved.
Belfries belong to a narrow band of northwestern Europe covering Belgium, northern France and the southern Netherlands. Medieval cities elsewhere put their pride into a town hall; cities here put it into a tower. A belfry stood for a charter, for the right of a town to govern itself against a count or a bishop, and the bells in it belonged to the citizens rather than to the church.
The building did several jobs at once. It held the city charters and the treasury behind an iron door, it worked as a watchtower and a prison, and its bells sounded the hours, the curfew, the fire alarm and the call to arms. The old skyline of a Flemish town usually shows three towers doing three different things: the keep for the lord, the church tower for God and the belfry for the aldermen. Sometimes a town saved itself the expense and made a church tower do both jobs, which is why four of the ten below are churches.
10 Impressive UNESCO World Heritage Belfries in Belgium
1. Belfry and Market Halls, Bruges
The Belfry of Bruges is the belfry most visitors meet first, and at 83 m (272 ft) it is the one that owns its square rather than sharing it. The tower rises from the market halls on the Markt, in the middle of a historic centre that is separately inscribed as a World Heritage Site, so Bruges carries two inscriptions in one view. The belfry dates from the 13th century and held the city’s charters, its treasury and its watchmen.
Climbing it is a commitment. There are 366 steps, no lift, and a stairwell that narrows badly near the top, and the reward on a clear day reaches to the sea. Adult admission is €16 ($19, £14), with reductions to €14 ($16, £12), and the tower is open every day with last entry an hour before closing. Book a time slot online, because the belfry runs at capacity through most of the year and the queue on the Markt moves slowly.
Two things catch people out. The belfry closes without warning in gusting or stormy weather for safety, and Musea Brugge will move a booked slot at no charge when that happens. It also shuts for maintenance for a few days at a time, including 21 to 24 September and 19 to 22 October 2026. If Bruges is your only stop, check the date before you buy.
2. Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp
The Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp is not a belfry in the strict sense. It is a church tower that also served the city as a watchtower and alarm bell tower, which is why it sits inside the inscription. Antwerp contributes two towers to the World Heritage site, the cathedral and the old town hall, and the cathedral is the one people come for.
The church was never finished. The design called for two matching towers and only the north one was completed, reaching 123 m (404 ft), still the tallest church tower in the Benelux. The unfinished stump beside it is not a ruin: it is simply where the money ran out in the 16th century.
Inside, four paintings by Peter Paul Rubens hang in the building they were painted for, including The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross. Cathedral admission runs about €12 ($14, £10). Climbing the tower is a separate, seasonal proposition run in guided groups over 515 steps, with a minimum age of 10 and a supplement of around €8 ($9, £7); the 2026 climbs ran in September and October and sold out quickly. Treat the interior as the reliable visit and the climb as a bonus you plan around, not the other way round. Our Antwerp guide has the rest of the city.
3. Belfry and Cloth Hall, Ypres
The Cloth Hall in Ypres is the most improbable building on this list, because everything you look at was put back after 1918. The medieval hall, built through the 13th century, was one of the largest commercial buildings in Europe, a covered market where the wool and cloth trade that made Flanders rich was bought and sold. German artillery reduced it to a shell during the First World War.
Reconstruction ran from 1933 to 1967 under the architects Jules Coomans and P. A. Pauwels, working from photographs, drawings and surviving stone, and the result copies the pre-war building rather than reinterpreting it. The belfry above it stands 70 m (230 ft).
The hall now holds the In Flanders Fields Museum, which tells the story of the Western Front from the ground it was fought over. A museum ticket includes the option to carry on up the belfry, another 231 steps, and the view is the point: from the top you see the Salient laid out, the ridges the fighting was about and the cemeteries between them. The building came out of a six-year renovation programme in March 2026, so the hall itself is in better condition than it has been in decades.
4. Belfry and Aldermen’s House, Aalst
The Aldermen’s House in Aalst is the oldest thing on this list. It dates from around 1225 and is generally counted among the oldest surviving town halls anywhere in the Low Countries, a stone building put up when most municipal business was still done in wood. The belfry was added to it in 1460, and the combination now fills one side of the Grote Markt.
The stonework is heavily ornamented and repays a slow look, particularly the aldermen’s balcony from which the town’s decisions were read out to the people standing below. It is the clearest surviving illustration of what a belfry was actually for.
One correction is due here, because it is repeated in almost every guide to the town. The Carnival of Aalst was on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, but it was removed on 13 December 2019, after the committee found that recurring racist and antisemitic imagery in the parades was incompatible with the convention’s principles. It was the first time anything had ever been taken off that list. The carnival still runs in the days before Ash Wednesday and still draws crowds; it simply no longer carries UNESCO status, and a guide that says it does is seven years out of date.
5. Belfry, Namur
The Belfry of Namur began as a defensive tower and was promoted into the job. Built in 1388 as part of the city’s third ring of walls, to plans by Godefroid de Boufiaule for Count William I of Namur, the round limestone tower was called the Tour Saint-Jacques and guarded one of the main gates.
It became the belfry only in 1746, when the tower of the church of Saint-Pierre-au-Château, which had been doing the job, burned down. From then on the Tour Saint-Jacques rang the alarm for the city as well as defending the gate, which is the reversal of the usual story: most belfries were built to be belfries, and this one was drafted.
It stands behind the Place d’Armes in the centre of Namur, and it is the only Walloon belfry in this ten. If you are working through Wallonia, Mons, Tournai, Thuin, Binche, Charleroi and Gembloux hold the other six.
6. Basilica of Our Lady and City Tower, Tongeren
The tower of the Basilica of Our Lady in Tongeren is 55.6 m (182 ft) and stands over the oldest town in Belgium, a Roman settlement long before it was a Gothic one. Construction of the tower began in 1442, the body was finished in 1541 and the spire followed in 1544, so the mid-16th-century date usually attached to it belongs to its completion rather than its start.
The tower has been open to climbers since 2023, after a long restoration, with roughly 300 steps to the top and a view across the Haspengouw orchards. The climb is sold as part of Teseum, the heritage site that wraps the basilica together with its treasury, its cloister and an underground archaeological route through the Roman and Merovingian layers beneath the church. Teseum opens daily from 9am to 5pm.
The treasury is the reason to allow more than an hour. It holds one of the most complete collections of religious art in Belgium, and the excavations below the floor show fourteen centuries of building on the same spot.
7. Towers of the Saint Peter’s Church, Leuven
Saint Peter’s Church in Leuven is on the World Heritage list for towers that were never built. The plan, drawn around 1505 and attributed to Joost Massys, called for three west towers, the tallest of them commonly quoted at about 170 m, which would have made it the tallest building in the world at the time. The first stone went down in 1507.
Ground conditions and money stopped it. The towers rose slowly, then not at all, and what stands today is a stump barely higher than the church roof with two lower stubs beside it. The design survives in a remarkable stone model, made between 1524 and 1530 by Massys and Jan Beyaert and set up in the town hall days after Massys died. Looking at the model and then at the west front is the most direct way to understand the ambition of a Brabantine Gothic building programme and the limits it hit.
The church faces the town hall across the Grote Markt, and the town hall is the more famous of the two, a late-Gothic front covered with statues. Inside Saint Peter’s, the treasury holds Dieric Bouts’s Last Supper, one of the key panels of Flemish primitive painting. Our Leuven guide covers the rest of the city, which is small enough to do in a day.
8. Saint Rumbold’s Cathedral Tower, Mechelen
Saint Rumbold’s tower in Mechelen is the one to climb if you only climb one. The tower reaches 97.5 m (320 ft) and the cathedral beneath it is the seat of the Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, the primate of Belgium, which makes it the ranking church in the country. The tower worked as church tower, belfry and city archive at the same time.
The climb is 538 steps to a glass-floored skywalk near the top, and the route up is now built as a visit rather than a slog: an augmented-reality piece in the ash cellar recreates a scene from 1516, and virtual reality on the skywalk rebuilds the Burgundian palaces you are looking down on. Adult tickets are around €8 ($9, £7), less in groups of ten or more, and numbers are capped, so book ahead. Access runs between 10am and 5pm.
The bells are the other reason to come. Two full carillons of 49 bells each hang in the tower, 98 bells and roughly 80 tonnes of bronze, and the 1981 instrument is the heaviest carillon in Belgium. Mechelen trains carillonneurs from around the world at its royal carillon school, so what you hear from the square is usually being played by someone very good.
9. Belfry and City Hall, Lier
The belfry of Lier is a slender Gothic tower of 1369 built by Hendrik Mijs, and it is all that survives of the town’s cloth hall. At 42.5 m (139 ft) it is one of the smaller belfries on the list, and it stands attached to the town hall on the Grote Markt rather than free of it.
The town hall beside it is much younger. The cloth hall became the town hall over the 15th century, and in 1740 it was rebuilt almost entirely in Brabant Rococo, so a 14th-century tower now grows out of an 18th-century building. It still seats the town council and houses the visitor centre.
The belfry is not open to climb. Lier is a half-hour stop rather than a half-day, and the reason to make it is the Zimmer Tower on the other side of town, an astronomical clock tower with a jubilee clock of 12 dials that has nothing to do with UNESCO and is the strangest thing in the province.
10. Belfry and Cloth Hall, Ghent
The Belfry of Ghent is the tallest belfry in Belgium at 91 m (299 ft), and it is the middle of the three towers that make the city’s famous skyline, between Saint Nicholas’ Church and Saint Bavo’s Cathedral. Building started in 1313, and the tower was altered repeatedly until 1913, when the present spire went up for the World’s Fair. The gilded dragon on top has been the city’s guardian since the 14th century.
The belfry did the classic job list: it rang the hours, sounded the alarm, watched for fire and kept the city’s charters in a strongroom called the Secret. The cloth hall attached to it was where the trade that paid for all of this was done, the same trade that built Ypres.
Adult admission is €13 ($15, £11), with €6.50 ($8, £6) for 19- to 25-year-olds, €2.60 ($3, £2) for 13- to 18-year-olds and free entry up to 12. It opens every day from 10am to 6pm with the last tickets sold at 5pm, and it closes on 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January. Crucially, there is a lift: you walk about a hundred steps to the first floor and ride the rest, which makes Ghent the belfry to choose if Bruges’s 366 steps are out of the question.
(Sofie: I visited the Belfry in Ghent during a day trip there!)
Which Belgian belfries can you climb?
Five of the ten towers above are open to climb, and they differ enough in effort that the choice matters. The table sets out what each one asks of you.
| Tower | Height | Steps | Adult price | Lift |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belfry of Bruges | 83 m (272 ft) | 366 | €16 | No |
| Belfry of Ghent | 91 m (299 ft) | about 100, then a lift | €13 | Yes |
| Saint Rumbold’s, Mechelen | 97.5 m (320 ft) | 538 | about €8 | No |
| Ypres belfry | 70 m (230 ft) | 231 above the museum | with museum ticket | No |
| Basilica tower, Tongeren | 55.6 m (182 ft) | about 300 | with Teseum ticket | No |
Ghent is the accessible one, Bruges the busiest, Mechelen the hardest and the most rewarding. Antwerp’s cathedral tower opens only for guided seasonal climbs, and the belfries at Aalst, Namur, Leuven and Lier are looked at from the ground.
Getting between them is easy, because every town on this list sits on the Belgian rail network and most of the journeys are under an hour. Bruges to Ghent takes about 25 minutes, Ghent to Antwerp about an hour, Antwerp to Mechelen about 15 minutes, and Ypres is the outlier at roughly an hour and a half from Ghent. Comparing train tickets across Belgian and cross-border operators in one search is quicker than pricing each leg on separate sites, particularly if you are adding the French belfries at Lille, Arras or Dunkirk to the route.
Basing yourself in one city and making day trips beats moving hotels every night. Bruges and Ghent both work; Ghent is cheaper and better connected, and the hotels in Ghent map shows what is free on your dates. If you want the wider route rather than the towers alone, our guide to the cities in Belgium sets them in order.
Don’t forget travel insurance
Plan for the best, prepare for the worst. Travel insurance has you covered in case part of your trip gets cancelled, you get sick or hurt abroad, and sometimes even when your electronics break or get stolen. I always make sure I am covered every trip I go on.
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WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
The 5 tips below come from re-checking every tower on this list against its own 2026 information, and each one changes what you would otherwise plan.
- Book Bruges, and check the maintenance dates. The belfry sells timed slots, runs at capacity most of the year, and is closed to visitors from 21 to 24 September and 19 to 22 October 2026 for maintenance. It also shuts at short notice in gusting wind, in which case Musea Brugge reschedules a booked slot free.
- Take Ghent if stairs are a problem. The Ghent belfry is the only one of the five climbable towers with a lift. You walk roughly a hundred steps to the first floor and ride from there, against 366 unbroken steps in Bruges and 538 in Mechelen.
- The Aalst Carnival lost its UNESCO status in 2019. It was removed from the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity on 13 December 2019, the first removal in the list’s history. The belfry and Aldermen’s House keep their World Heritage status; the carnival does not.
- Antwerp’s tower climb is seasonal and sells out. The cathedral interior is open normally, but the 515-step tower climb runs in guided groups for a short season, has a minimum age of 10, and its 2026 tickets went on sale in early August. Plan the visit around the cathedral and treat the climb as a booking to chase.
- Tongeren’s tower only reopened in 2023. Guides written before that treat the basilica as a look-from-outside stop. It is now a climb of about 300 steps sold with the Teseum ticket, which also covers the treasury and the excavations under the church, and Teseum opens daily from 9am to 5pm.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team, and the original was written for the site by Bram, a freelance writer, translator and travel photographer who was born and grew up in a small town in Belgium and blogs at Travel. Experience. Live. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, whose note on the Ghent belfry above comes from her own day trip there. The team covers Belgium for independent travellers, including the tours, hotels and rail routes worth booking around the belfry towns, and updates this page when prices, opening hours and heritage listings change.
Sophie, Great post. I can’t wait to visit some of these Belgian cities I’ve yet to get to.
Thansk Corinne, but this was all Bram :)
I would love to go sea-kayaking in Sweden. It looks so peaceful and gorgeous.
Somehow I think this comment belongs with another post:D
Northern France and the south of present-day Netherlands all belonged to Belgium in its history. And indeed, you say “this particular region” which is thus Belgium. Belgian Belfries. Are unique to Belgium. “Today partly located in present-day France and present-day Netherlands, that’s because Belgium in the past was a bigger country.”
Thanks for commenting, Isabelle.
The country of Belgium, founded in 1830 after the Belgian Revolution, has never been larger than it is nowadays. If anything, it used to be even smaller, until the East Cantons were annexed from Germany after WWI.
Northern France and the southern Netherlands were never part of Belgium; it was the other way around. Historically, the region that is modern-day Belgium has been part of both France and the Netherlands (and a host of other countries). I agree with you that, culturally speaking, the region I mention in the post (northern France, Belgium and the southern Netherlands) could be considered homogenous. When it comes to geography, however, it is clearly divided, which is why I specifically distinguish between said three countries/regions.
This post talks about the belfries that are located within the boundaries of the country of Belgium. The UNESCO World Heritage Site also includes a few belfries in northern France, which could never be considered as a part of Belgium. I would always refer to those particular belfries as French belfries, definitely not Belgian belfries.
Yes, they were part of Belgium and Belgium has never been smaller, that’s crazy what you’re saying! Also Belgium is not founded in 1830, but in 52 BC. You should listen to the words you are using and think. Thanks for your great post though, I learned something new about the Belgian Belfries, which are unique to Belgium, and thus also invented by Belgium! Today Belgian belfries are also located in present-day France and present-day Netherlands, as these territories belonged to Belgium. Bye, I wasn’t corrupted by separatism by living in Belgium, but can enjoy a healthy distance and independence, keeping oversight with a strong analytical viewpoint and power, while having deep insight knowledge and experience of Belgian culture as well, by living abroad. Also Belgium is Romanesque and the Netherlands is Germanic, in fact the Roman-Germanic cultural breach is situated in present-day Netherlands! Bye!
Isabelle, if you’re referring to the ancient Roman province of Belgica, then you’re right. That area was, in fact, a lot bigger than present-day Belgium. However, Gallia Belgica existed a full millennium before the first belfry was even built. I don’t think we can use Roman regions and 2,000-year-old provincial borders as a reference to 21st-century geography can we?
Also, no self-respecting historian would ever dare to state that Belgium was founded in 52 BC. I would also like to point out that I refer to the ‘country of Belgium’ in my comment, which is without question founded in 1830. If we’re going to reconsider pre-Napoleonic borders, then Prague is still part of Austria, and the Ottomans rule Greece and the Balkans.
At the time of construction of the belfries, there was no Belgium. Instead, the region was ruled by a succession of different foreign powers. Many cities were, however, fairly independent and powerful. Hence, why they built belfries, as I’ve talked about in the post.
Therefore, I stick to my point: Belgian belfries are found in the country of Belgium, not in other countries. Again, this post only talks about belfries located within Belgian borders, so I think that the name Belgian belfries is appropriate.
Lastly, I always enjoy a good and healthy discussion, but I think that your remark on corruption by separatism is a bridge too far. I know you don’t know me at all, but if you’re implying that I am a separatist, you couldn’t be further from the truth. And, by the way, I live abroad too, which has made even more aware of Belgium’s issues and, most of all, strengths.
Really helpful post! I’m heading to Belgium this summer and was planning a quick day trip to Bruges – though this makes me want to stop by the others!
Glad you like it, Joey. Thanks for commenting! So many cool places to check out in Belgium :-)