Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Moscou, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
The tram out of central Gent stops for good at Moscou, a workers' quarter of Gentbrugge named for the Russian camp pitched on its fields in 1815.
About Moscou
Where to stay in Moscou
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Moscou is a bed-thin corner of Gentbrugge, and what it offers in place of hotels is a tram terminus. Tram tracks end at Jozef Vervaenestraat. A line has run from that stop into central Gent since 5 September 1931, and Merelbeke station, which stands on Gent ground despite its name, is a walk to the south.
Beds here mean houses, the brick rows of Tuinwijk ter Heide and the streets off Jules de Saint-Genoisstraat. You will want this base if the ride in matters more to you than the address.
About Moscou
What are the main landmarks in Moscou?
Moscou keeps its landmarks in industrial form. Wijkpark De Porre occupies the yard of the E. De Porre cotton works at Jules de Saint-Genoisstraat 99-101, cleared for green space and housing and opened as a park in 2014. The concrete cooling tower was kept, and so was the works' steam turbine, which stands free on the grass under a glass cover.
Tuinwijk ter Heide, about a hundred social houses of 1922-1924 by Oscar Van de Voorde, fills the streets south of it. The Sint-Eligiuskerk on the Keiberg belongs to the Gentbrugge quarter across the Brusselsesteenweg, not to these streets.
What is the history of Moscou?
Moscou owes its name to Russian troops. Cossacks under Colonel Bishalov camped on the fields of Ledeberg and Gentbrugge in 1814, and a detachment is recorded again in the Veldwijk during the Hundred Days of 1815; Gent parents were still frightening children with Peetje Kozak a century later. The nickname stuck, took its French spelling, and outlived the camp.
Housing arrived with the railway, once the NMBS central workshop known as the Arsenaal was built in 1881-1884 on the sandy Heide and the Veldwijk filled with brick rows. A drill ground of 1815 lay between the two until the E17 viaduct swallowed it in the early 1970s.
Where is Moscou?
Moscou fills the south end of Gentbrugge, between Ledeberg on one flank and the Brusselsesteenweg on the other, down to the Merelbeke boundary.
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More areas in Gent
Updated September 2026