Searching for Street Art in Ghent

Ghent has a vibrant street art scene. As it turns out viewing street art is an incredibly family-friendly activity. You can be as loud as you want and viewing street art inherently involves a bit of seek-and-find and the subjects are usually quite amusing.

We started our Ghent street art viewing on foot on Graffiti Street. The city has given this alley over to street artists or anyone wanting to give street art a try. The street changes daily as artists legally add their mark. It’s colorful and fun to explore. It’s also open all day, so it’s the perfect activity if you have early risers like we do.

With older kids you could even grab your own can of spray paint and give it a try. Our kids were intrigued by the colors and patterns. They had fun searching for designs and playing eye spy.

Included in our CityCard Ghent was a bike rental. We reserved a regular bike (covered by the card) and a Christiania 3-wheeled cargo bike prior to our visit. We picked them up as soon as the shop opened at 10am. The rental is 24 hours, which gave us lots of time to search for more street art.

We were armed with a Sorry, Not Sorry street art map from the Tourist Information Center, which turned out to not be very helpful. The online map is updated, but will not show your location so it is also difficult to use while biking around. You can also try to use the Street Art Belgium webpage and map. We ended up just biking around and once we found one artwork we used the map to find more nearby. We also tried to find ones near other destinations we were already planning on going to. This worked out just fine since we found lots of street art

There were a few more we found but I didn’t get a chance to take a photo because it was unsafe to stop in the middle of the street!

In general we found biking in Ghent to be lovely, although it’s best to avoid the tram lines as the bike tires easily get stuck in the track. If you get a wheel in a tram track, you’ll go over your handlebars. It’s not pretty. Even with biking every day here in the Netherlands I got nervous when a tram was coming down the line behind me!

 

I hope you take the time to find some great street art wherever you are!