Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Desteldonk, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Desteldonk strings two village cores along a sand ridge in Gent, the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Geboortekerk at one end and the gemeentehuis of 1884 at the other.
About Desteldonk
Where to stay in Desteldonk
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Desteldonk amounts to two short village cores, so the base for a stay is the Gent centre, roughly nine kilometres south, and the village becomes an afternoon out. Desteldonkdorp is the reason to come. The parish church, its walled kerkhof, and the pastorie at number 26 stand within a few hundred paces, and the green off the Rechtstraat holds a horse chestnut planted as a peace tree in 1919.
Take a room out this way only if the Gent port is your business, because the R4 runs past the western edge and industry fills the ground between the village and Oostakker.
About Desteldonk
What are the main landmarks in Desteldonk?
Desteldonk gathers its monuments on Desteldonkdorp, where the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Geboortekerk carries a fourteenth-century core of four bays beneath an octagonal crossing tower and needle spire. The choir was rebuilt in 1541, iconoclasm forced repairs from 1582 to 1592, and the aisles and transept followed in 1597. A walled kerkhof rings it.
Inside hangs a Last Supper attributed to Jacob Jordaens. On Nokerstraat the Molen Van Hecke keeps a brick stump, a stone belt mill of 1904 whose sails came down in 1950.
What is the history of Desteldonk?
Desteldonk first appears as Thesledung in a charter of 966 listing the holdings of the Sint-Baafsabdij. The parish is named in 1236 and won a keure with a vierschaar and a bench of aldermen in 1248, and it stayed a Sint-Baafs parish outside the Gent city gates until the ancien régime closed. Ownership passed to the Sint-Baafskapittel in 1560.
French troops all but destroyed the village in 1677. Pierre Langerock raised the neo-Gothic gemeentehuis at Moleneinde in 1884, and a royal decree of 31 December 1964 folded the municipality into Gent so the port industry zone could expand.
Where is Desteldonk?
Desteldonk runs east to west on a sand ridge, with the Kanaal Gent-Terneuzen and Evergem west, Mendonk and the Moervaart north, and Oostakker south.
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Updated September 2026