Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Rooigem, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Meadow water stands at Rooigem's western edge in the Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen, a quarter of Gent that the Rooigemlaan of 1897 cut away from the Brugse Poort.
About Rooigem
Where to stay in Rooigem
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Rooigem is residential ground just outside the R40 ring, north-west of the old core of Gent, and the hotel trade never came here. The Bourgoyendreef runs off the western streets into the reed and wet meadow of the Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen, and the municipal pool sits at Nimfenstraat 2. The Brugse Poort begins across the Rooigemlaan. Stay in Rooigem if you want that meadow at first light and a terraced street to come home to, with the cafes of the Brugse Poort one crossing away.
About Rooigem
What are the main landmarks in Rooigem?
Rooigem's heritage list is short. The Sint-Theresia van het Kind Jezuskerk stands at Boomstraat 73, a neo-Romanesque church of yellow brick built in 1928 to plans by Edgard Van Hoecke-Delmarle, with its tower at the north-east corner. At Peerstraat 91 the Hof van Barmhartigheid holds an eighteenth-century farmhouse whose barn and stables were cut into five two-bay cottages in 1864.
The Zwembad Rooigem closes the same street at Nimfenstraat 2, five volumes under butterfly roofs that the city council adopted in 1960. Gent's belfry and cathedral sit two and a half kilometres east, outside the quarter.
What is the history of Rooigem?
Rooigem was a farming hamlet outside the walls of Gent, its core on what is now the Peerstraat, with about ten windmills over the fields. Carthusians founded the charterhouse of Koningsdal here in 1328, Calvinists destroyed it in 1578, and Joseph II dissolved the rebuilt house in 1783, leaving a street name behind. The Brugsevaart was cut through to Rooigem between 1618 and 1623.
Once the city dropped its octrooi tolls, textile firms took the cheap ground beyond the wall, and in 1897 the industrialists were given the Rooigemdreef, now the Rooigemlaan. The mills died after 1945.
Where is Rooigem?
Rooigem runs from the Brugsevaart down to the Drongensesteenweg, with the Bourgoyen-Ossemeersen on its west flank and the Rooigemlaan closing it on the east.
Good for
More areas in Gent
Updated September 2026