Pint Passport
Red-brick front of Markt 50 with DE PRESSE over the café windows, a terrace in front and an arched passage at the sidePhoto: Fien Cornelis, Onroerend Erfgoed · licence

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Café De Presse

Markt 50, 9500 Geraardsbergen

Grade C · TraditionBelieved trading · not confirmed

Café De Presse is dated 1459 in the press. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1459
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. The Flemish inventory dates the house at Markt 50 to the 17th century and notes an older core, with the street front entirely altered in the 20th century; behind it, at right angles, a brick and sandstone building of three storeys the inventory puts, with a question mark, in the 17th century, with a crow-stepped gable and a partly blocked sandstone cross window.

Pub website Directions
  • Locals
  • Market square

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
Dated 1459 in the press; no early record found.

Hatched: 567 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

On Geraardsbergen's sloping market square, De Presse bills itself as the oldest café in Flanders, tracing its roots to 1459, when the town's first Manneken Pis is said to have stood against the façade of the house then called De Ghulden Cop. Today it is an unpretentious local bar, reopened in 2022, with regular spaghetti nights.

What the records show

The 1459 comes from a 2022 report in Made in Oost-Vlaanderen, which says that in 1459 the façade of the house, then called De Ghulden Cop, held the first Manneken Pis figure, and adds that whether De Presse is the oldest café in Flanders is a question for historians. That shows a named house on the market, not an early tavern licence; no documentary proof of 15th-century café use was found. Whether it is open today is a different question from how old it is, and the answer is not one we can give: Belgium’s register of businesses, standing at 17 September 2026, holds no live business at Markt 50, only five ceased branches of this name. A register can lag a new tenant, so it is left as trading rather than closed, but anyone travelling to Geraardsbergen for it should check first.

What to look for inside

  • Claims 1459, linked to Geraardsbergen's Manneken Pis
  • The Flemish inventory dates the house to the 17th century, on an older core
  • The 1459 figure was cast in Brussels and delivered in May 1459
  • Historic house name De Ghulden Cop
  • Reopened in October 2022 after closure

Visiting

Café De Presse is in Geraardsbergen, Belgium, at Markt 50, 9500 Geraardsbergen. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

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Sources

  1. www.made-in.be/oost-vlaanderen/michael-behiels-heropent-de-deuren-van-oudste-cafe-van-vlaanderen/
  2. www.opcafegaan.be/geraardsbergen/cafe-de-presse
  3. inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/8455
  4. web.archive.org/web/20241127125232/https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/8455
  5. nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis_van_Geraardsbergen
  6. kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/zoekadresform.html?actionLU=Zoek&straatgemeente1=Markt&huisnummer=50&postcod1=9500&postgemeente1=Geraardsbergen
  7. www.nuus.be/2026/07/05/ingrid-de-plus-60-neemt-cafe-de-presse-over-in-geraardsbergen-ik-wil-het-cafe-weer-laten-leven/

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Oct 2026

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Checked by OldPubs: Café De Presse dated 1459

Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.

How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.

Above: the record  ·  Below: what readers rememberThe record ends here

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The snug

What people remember about Café De Presse

Nobody has written about this pub yet. These are readers’ own recollections, not our records — we check documents, not memories, and a memory never moves a date or a grade.

Were you a regular here?

We are after the things a record cannot hold: the landlord’s name, what was behind the bar, the room that is not there any more, the year the fire was moved. One paragraph is plenty.

The snug opens shortly. Until it does, send it to hello@oldpubs.com and we will put it on this page with your name on it.

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