Eeklo

Eeklo is a Belgian municipality in the Flemish province of East Flanders. The municipality comprises only the town of Eeklo proper. The name Eeklo comes from the contraction of "eke" and "lo", two Old German words meaning oak and sparse woods .

There are not many traces of early habitation in the Eeklo area. It is presumed that some oaks would have attracted the attention of travellers on the Roman road that ran along the local sandbar among the marshes. By 1240, a town had grown here and had already become important enough to warrant a civic charter by Jeanne of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders. Over the years, the marshes were drained to give place to fortified farms, some remnants of which can still be seen today . Like most other cities in the County of Flanders, Eeklo's economy was based on the cloth industry, and commercial relations were established with the more powerful neighbouring cities, Ghent and Bruges.

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