Experience the best of Mechelen

Mechelen lies on the River Dijle, midway between Brussels and Antwerp, in Flanders. In the early sixteenth century it was the capital of the Habsburg Netherlands, ruled by Margaret of Austria from a palace in the centre, and the city still has grand Gothic and Renaissance buildings from that time. St Rumbold's Cathedral, with its unfinished tower, 97 metres tall, looms over the Grote Markt.

The tower holds two carillons, and Mechelen's school is where carillonneurs from around the world train. The Hof van Busleyden, a Renaissance townhouse, is now a museum of the city's history, and the Kazerne Dossin museum and memorial tells the story of the Holocaust in Belgium. The Great Béguinage, a quarter of small houses once home to a religious community of women, is a World Heritage site, and old houses and cafés line the Dijle.

Mechelen asparagus, picked in spring, and Mechelse koekoek, a local chicken, are the city's own foods, and beer is brewed in the centre. Locals are nicknamed Maneblussers, moon-extinguishers, after a tale of townspeople who mistook the moon glowing behind the cathedral tower for a fire and tried to put it out.