Gestel

Further on lies the picturesque center of Gestel, the smallest municipality in the province before the merger in 1964. “The village was once declared the most beautiful in Flanders.” Everything is situated around the Sint-Lambertusplein: the Gothic church, the cemetery with graves from the 17th century, and the pillory from 1779, which is called the ‘klappeistaak’. Here, people would chat with each other after mass.

“Pay attention to the ornaments on the gate: the scale as a symbol of good and evil, the plume of smoke that symbolizes your candle going out. In the corner building on the square, some women started a small school in the mid-19th century. Through a detour, they ended up in Berlaar. There, they founded a boarding school, a school for kindergarten teachers, and an agricultural home economics school at the end of the 19th century. There is still a residential care center and a secondary school run by those same sisters.”

GVA - Gazet van Antwerpen