Belgium · Flanders · Gent
Sint-Macharius, Gent — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Romanesque abbey walls stand in open grass at Sint-Macharius, a district east of central Gent named for a pilgrim who died in the Sint-Baafsabdij.
About Sint-Macharius
Where to stay in Sint-Macharius
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
Sint-Macharius keeps what beds it has on the Kasteellaan, the wide avenue closing its eastern side. An aparthotel and a handful of guest rooms sit along that avenue, ten minutes on foot from the Sint-Baafsabdij ruins and from Gent-Dampoort station to the north-east. Prooststraat and Spanjaardstraat are residential.
Those brick rows cover the ground the Spanjaardenkasteel held, which puts a rented flat five minutes from the abbey wall and from the quay at Voorhoutkaai. Take this base if ruins and river water suit you better than a lobby.
About Sint-Macharius
What are the main landmarks in Sint-Macharius?
Sint-Macharius holds the ruins of the Sint-Baafsabdij, an abbey founded in the seventh century and Benedictine from 946, beside the confluence of the Schelde and the Leie. Refectory, lavatorium and the eastern cloister range still stand, and hornbeam hedges trace the vanished abbey church. A lapidarium fills the refectory.
The Sint-Machariuskerk stands beside the ruins on Sint-Machariusstraat, a neo-Gothic brick basilica whose first stone was laid on 13 June 1880 and whose tower waited until 1893. At Coyendanspark 1 the gatehouse of the old slaughterhouse survives, the last piece of the complex Louis Roelandt began in 1853.
What is the history of Sint-Macharius?
Sint-Macharius takes its name from Macharius, a pilgrim who died of plague in the Sint-Baafsabdij in 1012 and became the parish saint. Amandus founded that house at Ganda. A village called Sint-Baafsdorp grew east of the abbey walls, and the sector still carries both names.
Charles V ended both: after the revolt of 1539 he had the abbey and the village pulled down, and he laid the first stone of the Spanjaardenkasteel on 12 May 1540. The fortress came down between 1827 and 1834. Gent put a cattle market and slaughterhouse on the cleared ground in 1857, and cut Slachthuisstraat through the filled southern moat four years later.
Where is Sint-Macharius?
Sint-Macharius runs from Tweebruggenstraat north to Schoolkaai, walled by the Kasteellaan on the east and by the Voorhoutkaai along the Schelde on the west.
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Updated September 2026