Museum Belfort in Ghent

You're standing at the Belfry of Ghent, a tower of more than ninety metres. Together with Saint Nicholas' Church and Saint Bavo's Cathedral, it forms Ghent's famous row of medieval towers. Look all the way up to the tip of the spire. Up there a gilded dragon turns in the wind, three and a half metres long and weighing 455 kilos. Legend says the people of Ghent stole it from Bruges in 1382. The truth is less exciting: they had it made themselves in 1377. The dragon symbolically guarded the city's freedoms, because the charters and privileges were locked away inside this tower. In 2018, during the Ghent Festivities, it breathed fire again for the first time in 199 years.