The Grote Markt of Mechelen is one of the grandest squares in Belgium, and on its eastern side stands the old cloth hall with its belfry, a building with a curious history. The hall was built in the fourteenth century, when Mechelen was a rich cloth-making town, and the belfry was planned to be a tall tower, but it was never finished. Its stump was eventually given a pointed roof, and later a sixteenth-century extension in the Renaissance style was begun to house the Great Council of the Netherlands, but that too remained unfinished. The belfry is part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France.
Mechelen was for a time the capital of the Low Countries. In the early sixteenth century, Margaret of Austria, governor of the Netherlands, held her court here and raised the young Charles V, the future emperor, in her palace. Her court attracted artists, musicians and scholars, and the city still has many buildings from that golden age. The tower of St Rumbold's cathedral, nearly a hundred metres tall, dominates the city, and it houses a famous carillon; Mechelen has a renowned school for carillon players, the oldest in the world.
The riding here is about getting in and out. Mechelen sits between Brussels and Antwerp, surrounded by busy motorways and ring roads, and the centre has pedestrian zones and cobbles. The surrounding countryside is flat, with fields, canals and villages, and the roads along the rivers Dijle and Nete are pleasant, with dykes and willows. Traffic around the city can be heavy. Weather is changeable, with rain and wind.
Mechelen has fuel, shops, restaurants and cafés. Local specialities include Mechelse koekoek, a breed of chicken, asparagus from the area in spring, and beer from the Het Anker brewery, which brews in a former béguinage building, including the strong Gouden Carolus, named after Charles V. The Grote Markt is lined with cafés, and a drink on a terrace facing the cloth hall and the cathedral tower is a fine way to spend an hour. Look up at the unfinished buildings, and admire the city's habit of starting ambitious projects and then thinking better of them.