Hidden Belgium: The House in Ghent where America won the war

On a winter day in 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed in a building on Ghent’s Veldstraat.

The house had been occupied since the summer by a delegation of five Americans led by John Quincy Adams. They had travelled to Ghent to negotiate a peace treaty with Britain to end the American War of Independence.

A small plaque was put up in 1964 on the site of the house where the treaty was signed. It includes a message from the Daughters of the Revolution ‘in appreciation of the hospitality of the people of Ghent’.