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Black-and-white photograph of the late-Gothic stone front of Botermarkt 3, lettered Cafe Turk over the ground floor and on the doorPhoto: Onroerend Erfgoed (1976) · licence

No. 42 of the Top 100

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Café Den Turk

Botermarkt 3, 9000 Gent

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Oct 2026

Café Den Turk is given 1228 with no published claimant. No earlier record has been found.

Claimed
1228
First record
none found
Building
no single date

The building. A wide house of four bays and three storeys under a slate saddle roof with a stepped side gable, which the Flemish inventory of architectural heritage dates to the third quarter of the 15th century and describes as a Lede stone front; restored in 1910–1912 to the design of the architect Hendrik Geirnaert, when the ground-floor cross windows were altered — we give it no single date because the 1912 date is a restoration of a 15th-16th century façade.

Pub website Directions
  • Locals
  • Historic interior

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon
1228 with no published claimant; no early record found.

Hatched: 798 years claimed with no document found yet.

The claim

Opposite Ghent's belfry and town hall, Den Turk is a proper brown café favoured by local politicians and old regulars, with a savings-club cabinet of numbered slots on the wall and portraits of local characters. It likes to call itself the city's oldest café; historians suggest tavern use began after 1567, but its atmosphere is timeless.

What the records show

No source we can open puts a year on this house. Ghent's own visitor guide calls Den Turk a 15th-century house that claims to be the oldest café in the city, and the Belgian beer press says the same without a date; the café itself posts only on social media. The 1228 and 1340 that circulate are traditional. Local research published in December 2004 concluded the building was occupied by a guild until 1567, so it could have become a tavern at the earliest after that, and possibly only after 1703.

What to look for inside

  • Traditional claim of 1228 foundation
  • The Flemish inventory dates the house to the third quarter of the 15th century
  • Catalogued under the heading of inns, as Herberg De Turk
  • Restored 1910–12 by the architect Hendrik Geirnaert
  • Coin 'spaarkas' savings cabinet for regulars
  • Opposite the Belfry and Town Hall

Visiting

Café Den Turk is in Ghent, Belgium, at Botermarkt 3, 9000 Gent. 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.belgiansmaak.com/cafe-den-turk/
  2. visit.gent.be/en/eat-drink/cafe-den-turk
  3. inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/24549
  4. web.archive.org/web/20240917111053/https://inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be/erfgoedobjecten/24549
  5. kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/toonvestigingps.html?vestigingsnummer=2055410796
  6. www.cafedenturk.be/

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

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Checked by OldPubs: Café Den Turk dated 1228

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 Den Turk

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.

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