STAM – Ghent City Museum
STAM – Ghent City Museum features on the Gingerguide audio walk through Ghent. Give it roughly ~75 min: enough to look, hear a two to three minute story on the spot, and ask the AI guide whatever the story leaves open.
- Type museum
- Suggested visit ~75 min
- Ghent Ghent guide
About STAM – Ghent City Museum
A fascinating museum of Ghent city history occupying a medieval Bijloke Abbey complex, combining ancient stonework with a striking Art Deco wing and detailed scale models of the city.
STAM, Stadsmuseum Gent, is Ghent's museum of urban history, occupying one of the most remarkable museum complexes in Belgium: the Bijloke Abbey, a medieval Cistercian monastery founded in the thirteenth century, combined with the Art Deco Bijloke hospital wing built in the 1920s.
The museum traces the complete history of Ghent from its earliest settlements to the present day, through an extraordinary collection of documents, maps, artworks, scale models, and objects. The centrepiece is a detailed scale model of medieval Ghent that allows visitors to understand the city's layout at its medieval peak. The medieval abbey buildings themselves, the refectory, the chapter house, the dormitory, are remarkable examples of thirteenth-century monastic architecture, with beautiful frescoes and vaulted ceilings. The Art Deco wing provides a striking modernist counterpoint. Together STAM offers perhaps the best introduction to Ghent's history of any institution in the city.
Did you know? The medieval Bijloke Abbey refectory contains 13th-century frescoes that survived both Calvinist iconoclasm and six centuries of Flemish history remarkably intact.
How long is a visit to STAM – Ghent City Museum?
Set aside roughly ~75 min for STAM – Ghent City Museum. That covers a good look and the narrated story, and because you set the pace you can always stay on.
Is STAM – Ghent City Museum worth your time?
STAM – Ghent City Museum is among the 22 narrated highlights the Gingerguide team chose for Ghent, so it is worth a look. Hear the story for the context, then ask the AI guide for anything more.
Nearby stops in Ghent
Hear the story of STAM – Ghent City Museum
Preview the Ghent tour free in the Gingerguide app.