Flanders, Belgium — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Flanders known for?

Flanders is known as the Dutch-speaking northern half of Belgium, a low country of old cloth towns and a broad share of the national coast. Its people are the Flemings. The region carries the Flemish tongue, a Belgian form of Standard Dutch, across its towns and festivals, medieval trading cities such as Brugge preserve the wealth of the old Flemish weavers, and the flat land runs from the North Sea beaches inland toward the Netherlands.

Art and language mark it apart.

Where is Flanders?

Flanders forms the flat northern part of Belgium, wedged between the North Sea and the Netherlands to the north and Wallonia and France to the south. Its land lies low and level. Broad polders and reclaimed flats run inland from the coast, the North Sea washes a long sandy shore along the region's western edge, and the ground barely lifts above the tide across most of the plain.

No mountains break the horizon. The region wraps around the separate enclave of the Brussels-Capital Region, which sits inside Flanders yet stands apart from it, so the Flemish territory forms a ring around the capital region at its centre. Rivers and canals thread the whole plain.

Slow waterways cross the flats between the old cloth towns such as Brugge, draining the land toward the North Sea, and the border with the Netherlands runs across open country in the north. Toward France in the south the land begins its gentle rise into Wallonia. Flat, watery, and open, the region reads as a single broad lowland.

What is Flanders like?

Flanders holds a Flemish culture built around the Dutch language, medieval art, and a long tradition of civic festivals. Its people are the Flemings. They speak Flemish, the Belgian form of Standard Dutch, which sets the region apart from French-speaking Wallonia to the south, and the tongue carries the songs, plays, and processions of the Flemish towns.

Painting is its great inheritance. The Flemish Primitive masters of the old cloth cities left works that still fill the museums of Brugge, and the belfries, guild halls, and marketplaces of those towns remain the stage for the festivals that mark the Flemish year. Craft runs deep here.

Lace, tapestry, and weaving grew from the medieval cloth trade that made Flanders wealthy, and that heritage still shapes the identity of a region that looks north toward the Netherlands in language and art rather than south toward France. The Flemish name and tongue bind it together.

What is the history of Flanders?

Flanders rose in the Middle Ages as a wealthy county whose cloth towns traded across northern Europe. Weaving built its early fortune. The medieval cloth cities such as Brugge grew rich shipping Flemish wool and linen across the North Sea, raising the belfries and guild halls that still stand, before the county passed through the hands of larger powers over later centuries.

It became the northern, Dutch-speaking part of the Belgian state. The old Flemish heartland kept its language and its art through every change of ruler.

What is the climate of Flanders?

Flanders has a mild maritime climate of cool, damp winters and soft, temperate summers. Cloud and rain are common. Westerly weather off the North Sea keeps the flat region grey and wet through much of the year, frost stays light and lasting snow is rare on the low coast, and the summers turn warm rather than hot across the plain.

Sea air reaches far inland toward the Netherlands.

How do you get to Flanders?

Flanders is reached through the airports and the dense rail network of northern Belgium. Fast trains cross the flat region. Frequent services link its cities to the capital and on to the Netherlands and France, the coast tram runs the length of the North Sea shore, and motorways and canals carry freight across the level plain toward Brugge and the ports.

Rail ties the whole lowland together.