Dendermonde

Dendermonde stands where the Dender meets the Scheldt and keeps a Grote Markt with a fourteenth-century belfry and cloth hall, a beguinage of small houses around a court listed with the other Flemish beguinages, and a church holding two paintings by Van Dyck. Its distinguishing tradition is the Ros Beiaard procession: a wickerwork horse several metres high, carried by walkers hidden beneath it with four children representing the Aymon brothers riding on its back, is paraded through the town in a procession that is held roughly once every ten years and only when the conditions of tradition are met, including that the four riders must be siblings born in the town. The horse is kept in a museum between processions.

History

La Tène finds and graves of the 2nd and 6th centuries show early settlement where the Dender meets the Scheldt; the Treaty of Verdun of 843 placed Dendermonde in Lotharingia, and after the Norman raids of 883 Baldwin II made it part of Flanders. Otto II built a fort here in the 10th century, the town received its charter in 1233 and grew on cloth, its cloth hall and belfry rose on the market square in the middle of the 14th century, and in 1384 it passed to the dukes of Burgundy; it suffered sieges and sackings in the 16th to 18th centuries, until its walls were dismantled, and the cotton industry and, after 1800, a modernised port and the first railways brought new trades (Wikipedia, Dendermonde).

The main sights

• The Ros Beiaard horse - a wickerwork giant paraded once a decade.
• The belfry and cloth hall - the fourteenth-century market buildings.
• The beguinage - small houses around a court behind a gate.
• Two Van Dycks - the paintings in the church of Our Lady.

When to go

April to October for the town; the Ros Beiaard procession happens roughly every ten years and dates are announced well ahead. Half a day otherwise. Museums close on Mondays.

Before you go

The procession is the town's great event and happens once a decade, so almost every visitor misses it and sees the horse in a museum instead. The town is otherwise quiet and small. Interpretation is largely in Dutch.

Nearby

Ghent is west; Mechelen and Brussels lie east.

Key facts