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’.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
