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Gravensteen Castle is a moated medieval fortress in the centre of Ghent, built in 1180 for Philip of Alsace, Count of Flanders, and it costs €15 (about $17, £13) for an adult, with an audio guide included in that price. It opens every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with last admission at 4.40 p.m., and it closes only on 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January. Children up to 12 go free.
The castle was the seat of the Counts of Flanders for around 170 years. After they moved out in the 14th century it worked as a courthouse, a prison and, in the 19th century, a cotton mill, before the city of Ghent bought it in 1887 and began restoring it. It has been open as a museum since 1953.
Gravensteen stands on Sint-Veerleplein in the Patershol quarter, on the river Leie, a few minutes from the Korenmarkt and the Graslei. Allow one to one and a half hours, depending on which of the two audio guides you choose.
What is Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen Castle is a 12th-century stone fortress in the middle of Ghent, complete with a moat, curtain walls, turrets and a gatehouse, and it is one of the better-preserved medieval castles in western Europe. The name is Dutch and means “castle of the count”. Gravensteen was built in 1180 for Philip of Alsace, then Count of Flanders, on the site of an earlier wooden fortification.
Its design borrows from the crusader castles Philip saw in the Levant, which is why the plan looks more military and less domestic than a lot of contemporary European castles. The Counts of Flanders used it as their main residence and their seat of power until the middle of the 14th century.
What you walk through today is a keep, a gatehouse, ramparts you can walk, a courtyard, narrow tower stairs, high halls and a set of cellars. The museum keeps a collection of arms and armour and a display of judicial instruments from the castle’s centuries as a court and prison. The Historic Houses of Ghent, the city body that runs it, describes it plainly as a fortress with corridors, narrow tower stairs, high rooms and real battlements, and that is an honest description of the experience.
Where is Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen Castle is at Sint-Veerleplein 11, 9000 Ghent, on the north bank of the Leie in the Patershol quarter of the old city. Gravensteen sits directly north of the Korenmarkt and the Graslei, the two squares at the heart of the centre, and it is about a three-minute walk from either.
Landmarks nearby give you the shape of the walk. St Bavo’s Cathedral and the Belfry are roughly 10 minutes southeast on foot, past the Korenmarkt. The Vrijdagmarkt is 5 minutes east. The Patershol streets that wrap around the castle are cobbled and narrow, and they hold most of the good restaurants in central Ghent.
The castle is best seen twice: once from the Sint-Veerleplein in front of it, which is where the photograph comes from, and once from the Grasbrug or the quay on the far bank, which gives you the walls rising straight out of the water. It is floodlit at night and free to look at from outside at any hour.
When was Gravensteen Castle been Opened to Public?
Gravensteen Castle opened to the public as a museum in 1953, after roughly 60 years of restoration work. Before that it had spent four centuries in uses that had nothing to do with counts. The Counts of Flanders left in the 14th century. From the late 15th century until the 1820s the castle housed the courts of the Council of Flanders, along with a prison and an execution site.
In the 19th century the buildings were sold off and converted into a cotton mill, and workers’ housing was built inside the walls. The city of Ghent bought the site back in 1887 and demolition of the industrial additions began soon after. Restoration through the late 19th and early 20th centuries stripped out later work, rebuilt collapsed sections and returned the silhouette you see now.
That restoration is itself part of the story rather than a neutral act. Nineteenth-century restorers across Europe tended to rebuild castles into what they thought a castle should look like, and Gravensteen is no exception, so some of what reads as medieval is late 19th-century reconstruction over a genuine medieval core.
What is the history of Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen’s history runs from 1180 to the present in four clear phases: a comital residence, a courthouse and prison, a factory, and a museum. Gravensteen was built for Philip of Alsace after his return from the Levant, replacing a wooden fortification that had stood on the same mound. The stone castle was as much a statement to the citizens of Ghent as a defence against outsiders, which mattered in a city that was one of the richest and most rebellious in Europe.
The Counts of Flanders held it as their seat until around the middle of the 14th century, when they moved to more comfortable quarters elsewhere in the city. From the late 15th century the Council of Flanders sat here, and the castle served as a courthouse, a prison and a place of execution for roughly 350 years, until the 1820s.
Industry came next. From the 1840s the site ran as a cotton mill, with machinery installed in the medieval rooms and housing built in the courtyard. The city bought it in 1887, cleared the factory and restored the fortress. Since 1953 it has been a museum, and the 800-year sequence from ducal seat to courthouse to factory to visitor attraction traces Ghent’s own path from medieval trading power to industrial city to tourist destination.
What is the history of torture in Gravensteen Castle
Gravensteen held a prison and a court for around 350 years, from the late 15th century to the 1820s, and the museum displays the judicial instruments from that period in its cellars. The cellars were used to hold prisoners, and interrogation under torture was a legal part of criminal procedure in Flanders during much of that time, used to extract confessions rather than as a punishment in itself.
The collection includes shackles, restraints, blades and a guillotine. Executions did not take place in the castle courtyard; they were carried out publicly on the squares of Ghent, which was the whole point of them. Some display pieces in European torture collections generally, and the iron maiden in particular, are 18th and 19th-century constructions rather than medieval instruments, so read the labels rather than assuming everything on show was used here.
Be warned if you are visiting with children. The cellars are dark, the subject is grim and the objects are real. The castle’s own audio guides handle the material without wallowing in it, and there is a separate children’s trail, the Little Guide Gravensteen, that gives younger visitors something else to follow.
What are the visiting hours of Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen Castle opens every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and last admission is at 4.40 p.m. That last-admission time is the one to write down, because it is well over an hour before closing and it catches out visitors who arrive at five o’clock expecting to get in.
The castle closes on four days a year: 24 December, 25 December, 31 December and 1 January. It is open on every other day, including Mondays, which makes it a useful choice on the day when many Belgian museums shut.
Book ahead. The Historic Houses of Ghent recommend buying online for guaranteed entry, and tickets cost exactly the same online as at the ticket desk, so there is no reason not to. Tickets bought online are non-refundable, so fix your date before you buy.
When is the best time to visit Gravensteen Castle?
The best time of day to visit Gravensteen is the first hour after it opens at 10 a.m., because the castle is compact and the narrow tower stairs create bottlenecks once a few coach groups are inside. Mid-morning to early afternoon is the busiest stretch, particularly in July and August.
By season, May, September and October give you the best balance: reasonable weather in Ghent, fewer visitors and lower room rates than midsummer. The interior is indoors and the audio guides work in any weather, so a wet November afternoon is a perfectly good time to see it, and the ramparts are the only part that really wants dry conditions.
Two dates are worth knowing. Ghent residents get in free on the first Sunday of the month, which means the castle is busier with locals then. The Gentse Feesten, the ten-day city festival in July, fills the whole centre.
How much is the cost for entering for Gravensteen Castle?
An adult ticket to Gravensteen Castle costs €15 (about $17, £13), and an audio guide is included in that price rather than sold separately. The full rate card published by the Historic Houses of Ghent is set out below.
- Adults: €15 (about $17, £13) for an individual ticket.
- Groups of 15 or more and teachers: €13 (about $14, £11) per person, with discounts not combinable.
- Ghent residents and UiTPAS Ghent holders: €10.50 (about $12, £9).
- Young people aged 19 to 25: €7.50 (about $8, £6).
- Children aged 13 to 18: €3 (about $3, £3).
- Children up to 12: free.
Free entry also covers Ghent residents up to 18, pupils of Ghent schools, carers accompanying a visitor with a disability, group supervisors, recognised guides, ICOM and Flemish Museum Association members, and Ghent residents on the first Sunday of the month. Some of those still require an online reservation even though the ticket costs nothing.
Two discounts are worth chasing. The CityCard Ghent covers almost every major attraction in the city plus free public transport, and it pays for itself quickly if you are visiting more than two or three sites. If you arrive by train, the NMBS Discovery Ticket bundles castle entry with 40 percent off the rail fare, so check Belgian rail fares before buying a separate ticket.
How long can you stay in Gravensteen Castle?
There is no time limit inside Gravensteen during opening hours, so you can stay from when you arrive until the castle closes at 6 p.m. Nobody moves you along, and the route is self-guided rather than timed, so the pace is entirely yours.
In practice the building sets its own limit. The circuit through the keep, the halls, the cellars and the ramparts takes most people between one and one and a half hours, and there is not enough material to fill three. Arriving early is the way to get the most out of it, because you get the tower stairs and the battlements to yourself.
How long is the typical visit time in Gravensteen Castle?
A typical visit to Gravensteen Castle takes one to one and a half hours, and which end of that range you land on depends on the audio guide you pick. The castle offers two, both included in the ticket price, and they are genuinely different products rather than the same tour in two voices.
The Big Five audio tour runs about an hour and is structured as a speed date with five figures from the castle’s past, told from the most striking spots in the building. The comedy tour by Wouter Deprez runs about an hour and a half and takes a wry, personal line on Philip of Alsace, crusaders and courtly love, illustrated by drawings from Randall Casaer. Both are available in Dutch, French, English, German and Spanish.
There is a third option that deserves more attention than it gets. A visio guide presents the comedy tour in Flemish or international sign language for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, it is included in the ticket price, and the castle asks you to book it in advance through the ticket shop.
How to get to Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen Castle is in the pedestrianised core of Ghent, so walking and the tram are the two sensible ways to reach it. Listed below are the ways to get to Gravensteen Castle, easiest first.
- Walking. From the Korenmarkt or the Graslei the castle is a three-minute walk north, and from St Bavo’s Cathedral and the Belfry it is about 10 minutes. The whole historic centre is walkable end to end in 20 minutes.
- Tram. Ghent’s tram network runs from Gent-Sint-Pieters station into the centre and stops within a couple of minutes of the castle, at Gravensteen or at Korenmarkt. The ride takes about 15 minutes.
- Train and tram combined. Gent-Sint-Pieters is the main station and it is roughly 3 km (1.9 mi) from the castle, which is a 35-minute walk or a short tram ride. Gent-Dampoort is the smaller station, about 1.5 km (0.9 mi) east.
- Cycling. Ghent is built for bikes and there are rental points across the city, including at Gent-Sint-Pieters. Bike racks sit near the castle, though the Patershol cobbles are hard going.
- Boat. Guided boat trips on the Leie pass directly beneath the castle walls, and several moor within sight of it, which is the best view of the building you will get.
- Car. Driving is the worst option. The old centre is a low-traffic zone with camera enforcement, and the nearest car parks, including Vrijdagmarkt, are a 10-minute walk away.
What are the house rules of Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen Castle publishes a short set of rules, and two of them are the opposite of what visitors usually expect. Listed below are the house rules of Gravensteen Castle.
- Photography is allowed. Photography and filming for private use are permitted throughout the castle. Professional shoots need permission from the Historic Houses of Ghent in advance.
- Bags cannot be stored. There are no lockers and no cloakroom. Luggage and backpacks can sometimes be left in the stables at your own risk if there is space, so travel light and do not plan to visit between trains with a suitcase.
- No eating or drinking inside. Food and drink are not allowed in the castle interior.
- No smoking. Smoking is prohibited in every part of the castle.
- No pets. Pets are not allowed, with the exception of guide dogs.
- Children stay supervised. The tower stairs are narrow and steep and the battlements are open, so children need an adult with them throughout.
The no-lockers rule is the one that ruins days. If you are coming from the station with bags, leave them in the lockers at Gent-Sint-Pieters before you come into the centre.
What visitors say about Gravensteen Castle?
Visitors consistently single out the audio guide as the thing that makes Gravensteen work, and that is unusual enough to be worth knowing before you go. The building itself gets the reaction you would expect: the moat, the walls, the drawbridge and the views over Ghent from the battlements are what people photograph and remember.
The comedy tour is the reason the reviews run warm rather than merely positive. Wouter Deprez is a well-known Flemish comedian, and the tour tells the castle’s history through jokes and personal digression instead of dates on placards, which is why visitors describe it as one of the few audio guides they finished rather than abandoned. The Big Five tour takes a straighter approach for anyone who would rather have the history without the comic framing.
The two consistent complaints are physical. The spiral stairs are narrow, steep and worn, which makes the upper levels hard going for anyone with limited mobility, and the castle gets tight around the middle of the day in summer. Neither is fixable in an 800-year-old fortress, and both are solved by arriving early.
Does it worth it to visit Gravensteen Castle?
Gravensteen is worth visiting, and the case for it is stronger than for most castle museums because of what it is not. It is not a ruin, it is not a stately home dressed as a castle, and it is not a reconstruction on an empty site. It is a genuine 12th-century fortress standing in the middle of a working city, with its moat still full.
At €15 with the audio guide included, a visit of an hour and a half works out cheaper per hour than most European city attractions, and it is one of the castles in Belgium you can reach on foot from a mainline station. The battlement walk gives you a view over the rooftops of Ghent that you cannot get anywhere else without paying to climb the Belfry as well.
Two groups should think twice. Anyone with serious mobility limits will find the upper floors inaccessible, since spiral stone stairs cannot be retrofitted with lifts. Anyone travelling with children who are upset by the subject matter should know the cellars hold real judicial instruments, and should pick up the Little Guide children’s trail at the desk instead.
Are there any guided tours to Gravensteen Castle?
Yes, Gravensteen offers guided tours, but they are aimed at groups and school parties rather than individual visitors, and they must be booked in advance. For everyone else the audio guide included in the standard ticket does the job, which is why the castle leads with it rather than upselling a tour.
Guided tours run in Dutch, French, English and German and cover both the interior rooms and the courtyards. If you want to bring your own guide, the castle charges a fee for that on top of the entrance tickets, so contact the Historic Houses of Ghent before you arrive rather than at the door.
For most travellers the sequence is simple: book the standard ticket online, pick the Big Five or the comedy tour when you arrive, and walk the castle at your own pace. Book a wider walking tour of Ghent separately if you want a guide for the whole city rather than one building.
What are the best things to in Ghent aside Gravensteen Castle?
Ghent packs its attractions into a centre small enough to cross on foot in 20 minutes, so you can pair Gravensteen with two or three of them in a day. Listed below are four things to do in Ghent besides Gravensteen Castle.
- The Belfry of Ghent. A 91-metre (298.6 ft) medieval bell tower off Sint-Baafsplein, part of the same UNESCO listing as the belfries of Bruges and northern France, with a gilded dragon on the spire and a carillon in the tower. A lift runs from the first floor, though you climb a spiral staircase to reach it. Adult admission is €13 (about $14, £11), and it opens daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with longer hours in July and August. It is one of the most popular things to do in Ghent.
- Ghent’s local food. The city has its own specialities: the cuberdon, a cone-shaped raspberry sweet with a soft centre, and Gentse waterzooi, a creamy chicken or fish stew. The Great Butchers’ Hall on the Groentenmarkt is a covered medieval hall now used to show and sell East Flanders regional products, and Ghent has a long-standing reputation as the most vegetarian-friendly city in Belgium.
- Patershol. The medieval quarter immediately behind the castle, a grid of narrow cobbled lanes that was once the leather workers’ district and is now where most of central Ghent’s good restaurants are. It takes 15 minutes to walk and is the obvious place to eat after the castle.
- The House of Alijn. A museum of everyday life on the Kraanlei, five minutes from Gravensteen, set in a former almshouse around a courtyard. It reconstructs 20th-century Ghent through shops, home interiors, home movies and objects, and it is a deliberate counterweight to a morning spent looking at armour.
Is Ghent expensive to visit for tourist?
Ghent is moderately priced by western European standards, cheaper than Bruges or Amsterdam and roughly level with Brussels. Attraction entry is the predictable part: Gravensteen is €15, the Belfry €13, and the CityCard Ghent bundles most of the major sites with public transport if you are seeing several.
Accommodation is the variable that moves the most, climbing sharply during the Gentse Feesten in July and at weekends. Eating out is where the budget goes: a sit-down three-course dinner for two runs to a meaningful sum, while a plate of stew and fries in a Patershol bistro does not. Ghent’s student population keeps a genuine cheap end of the market alive, which is not true of Bruges.
Our breakdown of the cost of living in Belgium sets out what everyday prices look like across the country, and rooms in the centre can be compared through a Belgium accommodation search if you want to see what your dates cost before committing.
How far is Ghent from Brussels?
Ghent is about 50 km (31 mi) from Brussels, and the train covers it in roughly half an hour, which makes each city an easy day trip from the other. Trains run frequently through the day between Brussels and Gent-Sint-Pieters, and the journey time varies with the service and the number of stops.
Driving takes around an hour in normal traffic on the E40, but it is the worse option at both ends, because Brussels and Ghent both restrict traffic in their centres and parking is expensive. Coaches are cheaper than the train and considerably slower.
Take the train. From Gent-Sint-Pieters a tram gets you to Gravensteen in about 15 minutes, so you can leave Brussels after breakfast and be inside the castle when it opens. Ghent also sits on the line between Brussels and Bruges, so the two cities combine easily in one trip, and the walk through things to do in Belgium covers what else fits around them.
WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips
The 4 tips below come from checking every practical detail on this page against the Historic Houses of Ghent, the city body that runs the castle, and each one contradicts something the older guides say.
- Be at the gate before 4.40 p.m. That is the last admission, 80 minutes before the 6 p.m. close, and guides that say 5 p.m. will get you turned away at the door. The castle is also shut on 24, 25 and 31 December and 1 January, with no half-days.
- Leave your bags at Gent-Sint-Pieters. Gravensteen has no lockers and no cloakroom, and luggage only goes in the stables at your own risk when there is room, so a visit between trains with a suitcase does not work.
- Budget €15, not €13. An individual adult ticket is €15 (about $17, £13). The €13 figure that circulates is the rate for groups of 15 or more and for teachers, and the audio guide is included either way.
- Take photographs freely. Photography and filming for private use are allowed throughout the castle, whatever older write-ups say about restricted areas, and only professional shoots need permission in advance.
About the author. This guide is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the notes in this post come from her trips to Ghent and its historic centre. The team covers Belgium for independent travellers, including the castles, city tours and Patershol restaurants worth booking around Gravensteen, and re-checks the ticket prices, opening hours and audio-guide options on this page against the Historic Houses of Ghent when they change.
I’ve been meaning to go inside the castle for ages – so interesting to see what’s actually in it. That view from the top is gorgeous.
Now that you’ve seen it on photo you’ll have to go up there yourself!:)
Beautiful! Did you know this castle passed as Warwick Castle in ‘The White Queen’ series? Funny!
I did not know that! And I have to admit I hadn’t heard of “The White Queen” yet:)
Check it out. I loved that series. It’s made after a book.
It’s noted:D Thanks for the recommendation!
Superb Mam…you have really created a mark of your own…Double thumps up…
Thanks :-)
Some genuinely good info, Gladiolus I discovered this.
Hahaha, thanks :-)
I went to Ghent recently, but I didn’t manage to visit inside the castle, I will definitely be back.
It’s quite fun to visit!
Maybe something that might interest you. in 1180 It was built on an old motte site after the image of another castle in present Syria (I think Aleppo), but because Flanders can be quit chilly, the castle was abandoned early 14th century as a living space, and the counts of Flanders moved to the Prinsenhof (court of princes), a cosy little palace not so far from the castle.
The castle was on one side of the river to show its strength toward the rich patricians who were also able to build stone houses,on the other side of the river, and to make clear who was in power, because many times the power and rights of the counts was challenged,.
It’s a bit weird that, even with modern technology, the old mediëval buildings of Belgium were used for the White Queen series. It makes people believe that royalty lived in weathered and chilly stone prisons without decoration.
Thanks so much for the additional info, Roland!
Hi, how many hours does it take to visit the castle?
Hey Alessandra,
It depends on whether you want to listen to the full audio guide or just have a look around. I’d say you can do it in a hour.