Once the country’s biggest abbey, St-Pieters was the original centre around which Ghent grew. Its fabulous wealth evaporated after French revolutionary armies confiscated all its properties, stripped its interiors and demolished the abbot’s house. At the heart of the complex, its vast baroque-fronted church survived; the shell of the main monastery was later used as a military garrison. You can stroll among ruins, vines and apple trees in the abbey gardens.

　　Inside, the abbey’s most impressive feature is the muralled roof of the former refectory; it's point 15 in ‘Alison’, a handheld video tour (€4) designed as 90 minutes of tangential musings by a ghost monk guide in a medieval love triangle. If you're rushed, the key tracks are 2 to 4 (history) and 10 (the garden).