Гент

Gent owns the most coveted painting on earth. Van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb — the altarpiece that opened European painting's modern age in 1432 — hangs in St Bavo's Cathedral, having survived fire, Napoleon, theft (one panel is still missing, Belgium's favourite cold case) and a world war spent in a salt mine; seeing it restored, colour by unearthly colour, is reason enough for the journey. Around it stands a city that was medieval Europe's second-largest north of the Alps and never forgot its temper: the Gravensteen fortress glowers over the Leie, and Gentians still call themselves "noose-bearers" after Charles V made the rebellious city parade in halters — worn now as an honour.

Today Gent is Flanders' student capital, bicycle-borne and argumentative, its guild-house quays lit like theatre at night. Each July the Gentse Feesten devours the centre for ten days — one of Europe's largest city festivals, from street theatre to techno — while the year-round establishment runs from the opera house shared with Antwerp to De Bijloke's concert hall in a medieval hospital and a jazz festival of international rank; the concert record confirms a musical life carried, in the source's honest phrase, by the city's churches, choirs and visiting ensembles as much as by its institutions. A stolen lamb, a noose worn proudly, ten days of festival: Gent is Flanders with the volume up.