Lier is a quiet Flemish town about 20 kilometers southeast of Antwerp, ringed by the confluence of the Grote and Kleine Nete rivers. It is one of those places that rewards a slow wander — pretty without being precious, historic without making a fuss about it. The Beguinage, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the main draw: a peaceful enclosure of seventeenth-century brick houses around a courtyard church, still inhabited and remarkably well preserved.
The other star attraction is the Zimmer Tower on the Zimmertoren square, an astronomical clock built in 1930 by the local clockmaker Louis Zimmer. The tower displays time in dozens of ways — lunar cycles, tides, the zodiac, a world time dial — and a separate Astronomical Studio behind the tower is even more elaborate. It is genuinely fascinating, the kind of eccentric local treasure you would never find in a guidebook for Brussels.
The Grote Markt has the usual Flemish town hall and guild houses, and the fourteenth-century Sint-Gummarus Church contains fine stained glass. Lier is also known as the "Schapenkoppenstad" — city of the sheep heads — a nickname the locals have embraced with good humor. The town makes an easy half-day trip from Antwerp, or a peaceful stop on the way to Mechelen.