Mechelen punches well above its weight. For four centuries — from the early 1500s, when Margaret of Austria made it the capital of the Habsburg Netherlands, through its long stint as the seat of the Catholic Church in the Low Countries — it accumulated cathedrals, palaces, and guild houses out of all proportion to its size. The compact old town is a tour through that history in an afternoon's walking.
Start at the Grote Markt with its outsized cathedral tower, climb the 538 steps if the legs allow, and then circle out through the Hof van Busleyden and Hof van Savoye (Margaret's palace), the river quays, and the surviving Brusselpoort city gate. The Kazerne Dossin on the northern edge of the centre tells a much darker chapter: it was the SS assembly camp from which more than 25,000 Belgian Jews and Roma were deported to Auschwitz between 1942 and 1944.
Beer is the other thing. Het Anker has been brewing on the same site since the 15th century and is where Gouden Carolus comes from — the tour and tasting are a short walk from the Grote Markt.