Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Malem, Ghent, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
White-painted brick under black tiled roofs repeats street after street in Malem, a 1950s garden district of Gent on an island cut off by two arms of the Leie.
About Malem, Ghent
Where to stay in Malem, Ghent
Not every neighbourhood fits every trip — here's what each one is good for.
Malem holds social housing and almost nothing else, so the room you book will be elsewhere in Gent. A neighbourhood-unit layout explains it: shops grouped at the Heldenplein, schools and church inside the boundary, and through traffic kept out. The island grew no hotel trade.
Gent's hotel streets are all in the old centre, around Patershol and Prinsenhof, a walk east across the water and back over the footbridge at Overzet. You come to Malem for the white terraces on the Ramskapellelaan, not for a bed.
About Malem, Ghent
What are the main landmarks in Malem, Ghent?
Malem's landmarks are its church and its war memorials, all inside its own street grid. The Onze-Lieve-Vrouw Koningin van de Vredekerk stands at Oud-Strijderslaan 1, white-walled under a squat conical tower, and closes the view along the Zesseptemberlaan where that avenue widens into a square. Circusplaneet bought it in 2015.
The nave was fitted out as a circus school. Gold-leaf lettering on the flank of Heldenplein 65 records why the district was built, and a bas-relief by Josip Simic sits on the corner house at Herdenkingslaan 11. St Bavo's Cathedral and the Belfry of Ghent stand two kilometres east, outside the district.
What is the history of Malem, Ghent?
Malem was empty ground for centuries, an island west of Gent's sixteenth-century wall. The Catholic city council under mayor Emile Claeys resolved in the early 1950s to buy the allotments that covered it and prepare the ground for building. The city kept one of five parcels and raised 64 flats for war victims and their families at the Heldenplein in 1951.
Four housing societies took the rest and put up 345 houses and 73 flats between them. King Boudewijn inaugurated the district on 22 June 1952, during his Joyous Entry into Gent, and the name given that day was Wijk Heldenhulde. Most keys followed in 1953 and 1954.
Where is Malem, Ghent?
Two dammed arms of the Leie enclose Malem, entered by road from the Malemstraat and the Herdenkingslaan, with Ekkergem across the water east.
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Updated September 2026