Lier's Grote Markt is one of those squares that makes you slow down without being asked. In the middle stands an elegant eighteenth-century town hall in pale stone, and grafted onto its side is something much older: a slim Gothic belfry from the fourteenth century, its four corner turrets giving it the look of a castle chess piece. Together they belong to the group of Belgian and French belfries listed by UNESCO, symbols of the moment when medieval towns won their freedoms and built towers to prove it.
Lier is a small town between Antwerp and Mechelen, laced with branches of the river Nete and still ringed by a green belt where its walls once stood. Locals carry the nickname schapenkoppen, sheep's heads, from a story that the town was once offered a university and chose a cattle market instead; the university went to Leuven, and Lier has never quite lived it down. A few steps from the square, the Zimmer Tower holds an astonishing astronomical clock built by a local clockmaker in the 1930s, with dials for tides, moon phases and planetary cycles. The writer Felix Timmermans, who celebrated Flemish joie de vivre in his novel Pallieter, was born here, and the béguinage, another UNESCO site, is one of the loveliest in the country.
The roads around Lier are the Flemish standard: flat, well signposted, busy around rush hour and full of cyclists who know they have priority. The centre is compact, with cobbles, one-way loops and limited access for motor vehicles, so park at the edge of the old town and walk in. Short rides out along the Nete valley towards the Kempen bring quieter lanes, pine woods and heathland, and a good afternoon can link Lier with Mechelen and Antwerp without ever touching a motorway.
Fuel stations line the ring roads. On the square, order a coffee with a Lierse vlaaike, a small, dark, spiced tart that the town has been making for generations, and watch the light move slowly across the belfry stones.