Ghent, verdict by verdict

Ghent has Bruges-scale medieval drama with a real city living inside it: students on the Graslei and Korenlei quays, the Gravensteen castle on the high street, the Belfry overhead, and Van Eyck's Adoration of the Mystic Lamb in St Bavo's cathedral. It is the Flanders pick for people who want beauty without the theme-park feel, plus canal boats and food and beer at student-friendly prices.

The trade is polish. Ghent is scruffier in patches and photographs less perfectly than Bruges, Friday and Saturday nights run loud around the student quarter so a hotel off that quarter is the fix, and anyone after hushed museum-town calm will find it too alive. If there is room for only one Flanders town and maximum pretty is the brief, Bruges wins that call.

One to two days covers the castle, the altarpiece, the quays and a canal tour, and the trip pairs easily with Bruges twenty-five minutes away or Antwerp and Brussels under the hour by train. April to October is the season, and the ten-day Gentse Feesten in July is a fantastic reason to come and a reason to book early. Most travelers decide the scruffier-for-livelier exchange is worth it inside a day.