Saint Bavo's Cathedral, Ghent

Step inside, and the first thing you notice is the change in temperature. The air is cool, even in summer, and it carries a faint smell of old stone and candle wax. Your footsteps sound different here — softer, then echoing back from high above. Light falls through tall windows in long pale bars. Take a moment and let your eyes adjust. You are standing in Saint Bavo's Cathedral, the mother church of Ghent, and one of the most important rooms in the history of European painting.

From the outside, you may have noticed how the building sits among Ghent's other towers. The belfry and Saint Nicholas' Church line up with this one along the old city skyline. Locals sometimes call this trio the three towers of Ghent. The cathedral's own tower is the tallest of the three. It is built from grey stone, square and heavy at the base, and it grows lighter as it rises. Climbing builders added it over generations, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

That slow construction is the key to this building. Saint Bavo's was not designed in one moment by one mind. It grew over several hundred years. Its story begins with a small parish chapel dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. Over the centuries, that chapel was rebuilt and enlarged again and again. The result is a church that carries several architectural styles at once. If you walk slowly from one end to the other, you can see the changes in the stone itself.

So why is it now called Saint Bavo's, and not Saint John's? Here is a twist most visitors miss. Saint Bavo was a seventh-century local saint. For centuries, his name belonged to a powerful abbey elsewhere in Ghent. In 1540, the Emperor Charles the Fifth punished the rebellious city. He dissolved the old abbey and built a fortress on part of its ground. The abbey's monks moved here, and they brought their saint's name with them.

Charles the Fifth has another link to this building. He was born in Ghent in 1500, and he was baptised in this very church. Think about that for a moment. The child carried to the font here grew up to rule an empire across Europe and the Americas. Later, he became the ruler who humbled his own birthplace. A few decades after the abbey's dissolution, in 1559, the church gained a bishop. From then on, it was a cathedral.

Now look down the nave, the long central hall where the congregation sits. The style here is Gothic — the medieval style of pointed arches and tall, slender columns that pull your eye upward. In this region, builders used a local variant often called Brabantine Gothic. It is a little plainer and more sober than the Gothic of France. Notice how the columns rise without much decoration. The effect is height, calm, and a sense of space.

Before you continue, find the pulpit. You cannot miss it. It is a great sculpted mass of white marble and dark oak, made in the eighteenth century by the sculptor Laurent Delvaux. It belongs to a much later age than the stone around it. Figures twist and lean, and carved branches climb around the stairs. Look for the old man with the long beard, who represents Time, and the young woman beside him who represents Truth.

The cathedral also holds a major painting by Peter Paul Rubens, the great Flemish master of the seventeenth century. It shows Saint Bavo leaving his worldly life to enter the religious community at Ghent. The canvas is full of movement, rich fabrics, and crowded figures. Rubens painted it in the 1620s. Compare its warm, theatrical energy with the cool stone around you. It shows how a medieval building gathered new art across the centuries.

But most people come here for one work above all. It is the Ghent Altarpiece, also called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. It was painted by the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck, and completed in 1432. An inscription on its frame says that Hubert began it and Jan finished it. The altarpiece is made of many hinged panels. Opened, it shows a vast scene of saints, angels, and pilgrims gathering in a green landscape around a lamb on an altar.

Why does this painting matter so much? The van Eycks worked with oil paint in a way almost no one had before. They built colour in thin, glowing layers. Look closely and you can see single hairs, reflections in jewels, and individual plants in the grass. The painting was commissioned by a wealthy local couple, Joos Vijd and Elisabeth Borluut. You can find their portraits on the outer panels, kneeling in prayer, painted with startling honesty.

This altarpiece has had a dramatic life. It has been stolen, split up, and moved more than almost any painting in history. Napoleon's armies took central panels to Paris, and they returned after his defeat. During the Second World War, the Nazis seized it, and it was later recovered from a salt mine in Austria. And in 1934, one lower panel, known as the Just Judges, was stolen from this cathedral. It has never been found. The panel you see today is a copy.

One more surprise. From 2012, conservators began a long restoration of the altarpiece. Under layers of later overpainting, they uncovered the original surfaces painted by the van Eycks. The most talked-about discovery was the face of the Lamb itself. The restored Lamb has strangely human, forward-looking eyes. People around the world debated it, and many found it unsettling. Today, the altarpiece is shown in its own protected space within the cathedral, and visiting it requires a separate ticket.

Before you leave, take a slow breath and look around once more. Notice the light on the columns, and the quiet movement of other visitors. Somewhere beneath your feet is the old crypt, the oldest part of the church. When you step back outside, turn and look up at the tower. The same stone that sheltered Charles the Fifth's baptism and the van Eycks' masterpiece still stands over the square. Ghent's daily life goes on around it, just as it has for centuries.