Het Pand
Monastery · Flanders
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Het Pand began as a hospital in 1201 before Dominican friars took it over in 1228, building it into a monastery beside the Leie river in Ghent's Onderbergen quarter. Margaret of York funded its stone library wing in 1473. Since 1963 it has belonged to Ghent University, now serving as the school's culture and convention center.
Look past the tidy conference-center exterior and the walls remember more turbulent decades. The Dominicans who took over this old hospital were traveling preachers, and their sermons wore out their welcome: the monastery became one of the first buildings struck when iconoclastic riots swept through the city. Ghent's first theological university grew out of the same friary walls in the 16th century. That prestige didn't last: through the 19th century the complex was carved into cramped rentals for students, artists, and vagrants, who nicknamed it the 'Flea Palace' long before Ghent University restored it into today's culture and convention center.
What you see
A cloistered courtyard of weathered stone arches opens onto an old cemetery, its worn masonry threaded with glass corridors that link the medieval fabric to the modern conference halls.
monasteryuniversity heritagemedieval library