Bijlokehospitaal en Bijlokeklooster van Cisterciën
Monastery · Flanders
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Founded in 1204 by Ermentrude Utenhove, this Cistercian hospital and abbey relocated here around 1228 and served as Ghent's main hospital for 750 years, once one of the largest such institutions in Western Europe. Its medieval church was largely destroyed by Calvinists in 1579, but the site's historic buildings survived. Healthcare here ended only in 1982; the buildings now house STAM, Ghent's city museum, and several arts schools.
Ermentrude Utenhove founded the hospital together with her brother, the canon Fulco, replacing an earlier hospital of the Sint-Niklaas parish that had burned down; it first stood near the Sint-Michielskerk in the city center. The move to the Bijloke came in 1228, when Count Ferrand donated land just outside the walls, and the Cistercian convent built to run it took the name Portus beatae Mariae, the Haven of Mary. After the University of Ghent was founded in 1817, the hospital doubled as a training ground for the city's doctors and medical staff. Listed as a protected monument in 1980, the complex was restored to win the Flemish Monument Prize in 2011, and its buildings now hold around seventeen cultural organizations, among them the Bijloke concert hall, the KASK School of Arts, and the dance company laGeste.
What you see
A glass passageway links the museum's new steel-and-glass entrance directly to the old abbey, setting a modern front right against centuries-old stone.
former hospitalcistercian abbeymuseum sitemedieval wall paintings