Belfry of Gent

The Belfry of Ghent rises above the city center as a slender, ninety-one-meter tower, easily identified by the gilded dragon that has occupied its peak since thirteen seventy-seven. Completed in the fourteenth century after decades of delays caused by war and plague, the tower represents the independence and wealth of Ghent’s medieval guilds. It served as a fortified watchtower and a secure vault for the city's official privileges, which were kept locked in a heavy chest within the building for over a century.