Gent · BE

STAM - Ghent City Museum

STAM – Ghent City Museum is the place where the story of Ghent is told in full, from a small settlement between two rivers to a medieval metropolis and today's lively city of students, commerce and culture. Housed on the historic Bijloke site at Godshuizenlaan 2, it pairs a striking glass-fronted contemporary entrance with the vaulted rooms of a 14th-century Cistercian abbey, so the building itself becomes part of the exhibit. Its permanent exhibition, 'The Story of Ghent', runs as a chronological circuit through six museum rooms, weaving together more than three hundred evocative collection pieces and multimedia displays. The undisputed crowd-pleaser is a gigantic aerial photograph of the city laid out as a floor you can actually walk across. If you want to understand Ghent before you explore its cobbled centre, this is the ideal starting point.