Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Miljoenenkwartier, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Wrought-iron gates and clipped front gardens line the Congreslaan in Miljoenenkwartier, an interwar villa quarter of Gent built on the 1913 world's fair site.
About Miljoenenkwartier
Where to stay in Miljoenenkwartier
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Miljoenenkwartier offers houses rather than hotel keys, and the reason sits in the deeds. Conditions of sale the city imposed from 1926 barred factories, workshops and drink shops from every plot it sold, and that ban has held. Rooms have to be found outside the quarter, along the Kortrijksesteenweg or around Gent-Sint-Pieters station, a short walk north-west across the railway.
The Sint-Pietersaalststraat predates the whole plan. You will want this base if a front garden suits you better than a lobby.
About Miljoenenkwartier
What are the main landmarks in Miljoenenkwartier?
The Ros Beyaert en de Vier Heemskinderen stands in a round pond at the middle of Miljoenenkwartier, bronze, cast for the 1913 world's fair and left in place when the fair came down. Aloïs De Beule and Domien Ingels made it. Jules Van Biesbroeck's group Sagesse, Force, Beauté holds the east end of the same park.
Rough brick pergolas flank the group. All of this lies on the Paul de Smet de Naeyerplein, three linked greens running from the Kortrijksesteenweg to the Krijgslaan. The Sint-Pietersbuitenkerk closes the view down the Fleurusstraat, a church of 1856 that Valentin Vaerwyck rebuilt between 1934 and 1937.
What is the history of Miljoenenkwartier?
Miljoenenkwartier grew vegetables for the Gent markets before anything else. Plans drawn from 1902 put army barracks on the Galgenkouter, the drill field where Ghent University's Sterre campus stands, and three street names outlived it: Krijgslaan, Vaderlandstraat and Congreslaan. No barracks were built.
The 1913 world's fair took the ground instead, with 25 hectares of the Galgenkouter lent by the army. The city sold the plots from 1926, fixed building heights, forbade flat roofs and required a wrought-iron gate of artistic character at every street boundary. Gaston Eysselinck put his own white house at Vaderlandstraat 120 in 1931.
Where is Miljoenenkwartier?
Miljoenenkwartier lies between the Kortrijksesteenweg and the Krijgslaan in Gent, south of the Brugge-Gent-Brussel railway and the Achilles Musschestraat.
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Updated September 2026