Ghent’s highly regarded Museum of Contemporary Art is one of Belgium's largest. Works from its 3000-strong permanent collection (dating from 1939 to the present) are regularly curated to complement visiting temporary exhibitions of provocative, cutting-edge installations, which sometimes spill out right across the city.
S.M.A.K.
Ghent
Lonely Planet's must-see attractions
The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb
1.05 MILES
Art enthusiasts swarm the Sint-Baafskathedraal to glimpse The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb (De Aanbidding van het Lams God), a lavish representation of…
22.99 MILES
Founded in 1242, this is Belgium’s only medieval convent-farm-hospital complex to have survived reasonably intact. Laboriously restored, it demonstrates…
24.68 MILES
The heart of ancient Bruges, the old market square is lined with pavement cafes beneath step-gabled facades. The buildings aren't always quite as medieval…
24.49 MILES
Bruges’ most celebrated art gallery boasts an astonishingly rich collection that's strong in superb Flemish Primitive and Renaissance works, depicting the…
24.54 MILES
In the restored chapel of a 12th-century hospital building with superb timber beamwork, this museum shows various torturous-looking medical implements,…
1.31 MILES
Flanders’ quintessential 12th-century stone castle comes complete with moat, turrets and arrow slits. It’s all the more remarkable considering that during…
19.52 MILES
Occupying a 12-hectare former industrial site, this is one of Europe's largest private contemporary-art initiatives. The indoor-outdoor interactive…
27.81 MILES
Belgium’s 93-hectare national botanic garden is located in the village of Meise, 12km north of Brussels. Home to 18,000 plant species, it’s based around…
Nearby Ghent attractions
0.07 MILES
Styled like a Greek temple, this superb 1903 fine-art gallery introduces a veritable A–Z of great Belgian and other Low Countries' painters from the 14th…
2. Universiteit Gent Botanical Garden
0.14 MILES
Home to more than 10,000 species, the pièce de résistance of Ghent's 2.75-hectare botanic gardens is its glasshouses, which contain an impressive…
3. De Wereld van Kina: het Huis
0.33 MILES
This mishmash of a natural history museum is aimed primarily at school kids. Meet Pterygotus (a man-sized prehistoric lobster), walk through a human body…
0.35 MILES
Once the country’s biggest abbey, St-Pieters was the original centre around which Ghent grew. Its fabulous wealth evaporated after French revolutionary…
0.44 MILES
Shoehorned into a 17th-century former nunnery-hospital complex, this fabulous, architecturally striking, ultra-modern museum does a very thorough job of…
0.92 MILES
The imposing and beautiful St Anne's church was designed by architect Louis Roelandt in 1851 but never completed in the true Byzantine-style he envisioned…
1 MILES
This 13th-century Gothic castle has had many incarnations; it's been used as a monastery, a school, a seminary, a prison and an asylum. It also housed a…
8. Statue of Van Eyck Brothers
1 MILES
This statue of the creators of Ghent's world-renowned Adoration of the Mystic Lamb was unveiled here for the 1913 World Expo.