Qualla: Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0 be. Seventeen and a half million passengers a year pass through Gent-Sint-Pieters. The busiest railway station in Flanders has a problem its 1912 architect Louis Cloquet never imagined: there are now more bicycles than there is room for. When Ghent's car-free zone expanded in 2017, the bicycle commute exploded, and the station's planners had to revise upward. The current target is 17,000 underground parking spots for bikes. The station that was built for the 1913 World's Fair is, in 2026, still building itself.

Image: CC BY-SA 2.0 be

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: Built for an Exposition

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit I took this picture in march 2006, CC BY-SA 3.0. The old South railway station, built in 1837, had served Ghent for three quarters of a century when the city won the right to host the 1913 International Exposition. A world's fair required a world-class arrival. Cloquet, the city's leading architect, was given the job in the lat...

Image: I took this picture in march 2006 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: The Murals of the Hall

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. Look up in the main entrance hall, after a century of grime came off in the 2010 restoration, and a set of monumental paintings emerges. The murals, restored to the rich blues and golds Cloquet's contemporaries would have seen, depict Belgian cities and the landscapes of the coun...

Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: The Renovation That Will Not End

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven57, CC BY-SA 3.0. Project Gent-Sint-Pieters was announced in 2004. The plan was ambitious: twelve new platforms with lifts and escalators, an enormous open hall beneath the tracks replacing the three tunnels, a tram stop with direct platform access, a new bus station, a new public square in front....

Image: Steven57 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: The Thalys That Left

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Demeester, CC BY-SA 3.0. From 1998 to March 31, 2015, you could board a high-speed Thalys at Gent-Sint-Pieters and reach Paris's Gare du Nord in a few hours. Then, in 2015, the service ended. Ridership had not justified the cost. International rail from Ghent today is reduced to the IC-04 service to Lill...

Image: Demeester | CC BY-SA 3.0

Gent-Sint-Pieters railway station: What a Station Is For

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jim Linwood, CC BY 2.0. There is a peculiar civic theory implied in the rebuilding. The original 1912 station was designed for an arrival - tourists coming from across Europe to see a fair, mounting from train to tram, walking under cathedral-tall vaults into a city that was performing its own grandeur....

Image: Jim Linwood | CC BY 2.0