Meulestede, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Meulestede?

The Sint-Antonius Abtkerk is the marker. Its nave was completed in 1731 in a classicising baroque, and a neo-baroque front with a bell tower and an octagonal lantern followed in 1867, above an organ from the Van Peteghem workshop. The church stands at the Redersplein, level with the Middendok of the Gentse haven.

Gent withdrew it from worship in 2017, and the building has served as a socio-cultural hall since. Its marble high altar came from the demolished Sint-Catharinakerk. North of the parish the Meulestedebrug lifts for shipping on the kanaal Gent-Terneuzen.

What is the history of Meulestede?

Marsh came first. Meulestede lay outside the late-medieval walls of Gent as a farming settlement on wet ground, reached by an old track that may have run along a dike, and that track became the Meulesteedsesteenweg around which the first ribbon of houses grew. The Ferraris survey of the 1770s already shows the line of it.

Industry arrived with the digging of the Voorhaven, the harbour works pushed through under Emile Braun, and small factories drew terraced streets for the workers who came with them. Trade moved north in the twentieth century and the quarter slumped. Renewal at the end of that century relaid the infrastructure and cleared the worst of the housing.

Where is Meulestede?

Meulestede sits north-west of central Gent, past Muide. Docks of the Gentse haven and their industry press against its eastern side, while the kanaal Gent-Terneuzen separates it from Wondelgem in the west, crossed by the Meulestedebrug carrying the N456. The ground is flat and was once marsh.