The Vlaeykensgang begins behind a door at Oude Koornmarkt 16, about a metre wide, on a street named after the corn market once held there. Behind it, a cobbled alley of 1591 twists between about ten houses and comes out on Pelgrimstraat and the Hoogstraat, a few minutes later and a few hundred years earlier. It is one of the few survivors of the narrow gangen, or alleys, that once riddled the old centre, and it survives because, in 1969, an antique dealer in his early twenties bought it.

Pies, shoemakers and a bell

The name most likely comes from vlaai, the Flemish word for a flan or pie: one account traces it to a house that sold flans and waffles here, and the spelling has drifted over the centuries, so you will also see Vlaaikensgang. An earlier version of this guide translated it as the alley of the little flag. It is the alley of the little pies.

Its first residents were shoemakers, and they had a civic duty that tied them to the building at the end of the street: they rang the alarm bell of the Cathedral of Our Lady, whose tower rises 123 metres a short walk away. Some of the city’s poorest people lived alongside them. The alley is close to the town hall and the Grote Markt, but it housed the people the Grote Markt did not.

By the late 19th century the old centre was full of alleys like it. Only the poorest lived in them; families crowded into small rooms, sanitation was poor, and sometimes a single pump served a whole alley. In the 20th century most were demolished and the land redeveloped. Another survivor, the Paardekensgang, lies in the Zuid district.

The car park that was not built

By the 1960s the Vlaeykensgang was derelict and abandoned, and the city planned to pull it down for a car park. Axel Vervoordt, born in Antwerp in 1947, stepped in. He bought the group of 16th-century houses in 1969 and spent several years restoring them, and the project became the start of his business. He went on to build an international antiques and interiors business: in 1984 he bought 7,400 pieces of blue-and-white Ming porcelain and showed them at the Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris, and in 1999 he bought the 19th-century distillery complex that became his company’s home. He opened an art gallery in Antwerp in 2011 and a second in Hong Kong in 2014. The alley was where it began.

Vervoordt’s restoration is the reason the alley is worth a detour, because he brought it back as somewhere people use rather than as a museum piece. The restored houses hold restaurants, galleries and bars. A travel guide published in June 2026 lists two restaurants inside: ‘t Hofke, with a few tables in a courtyard garden, and Sir Anthony Van Dijck, the more formal of the two, in one of the old buildings. Earlier write-ups, this one included, also mentioned a restaurant called De Vlaeykensgang and a Museum Vlaeykensgang. We could find no trace of either.

Other cities were less lucky with their alleys. In Edinburgh, Mary King’s Close was partly demolished and buried in 1753 to make way for the Royal Exchange, now the City Chambers; its houses survive underground and are now run as a tourist attraction. Antwerp nearly lost its alley to a car park, and kept it in daylight instead. The writer Derek Blyth, author of The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium, picked it for his Hidden Belgium series in The Brussels Times in 2023, which is about as famous as a secret alley can get.

When to go

The alley is open to walk through, and the walk takes a few minutes. The best time is a Monday evening in July or August. In recent summers, from 20:00 to 21:00, the city carillonneur, Koen Van Assche, and guest players give concerts from the cathedral tower, organised by Museum Vleeshuis, and the Vlaeykensgang is a popular place to listen. Van Assche sees the other side of it. “It’s lovely to do, because when I play I can see people walking on the Grote Markt out of the corner of my right eye,” he told VRT in 2023. His repertoire is broad: “Everything with a melody in it is possible on the carillon. Maybe hip-hop or rap is a bit harder.”

The shoemakers of 1591 went to the bell. On Monday evenings in summer, the bells come to them.