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The seat of the Counts of Flanders and the largest town in western Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, GHENT was at the heart of the Flemish cloth trade. By 1350, the city boasted a population of 50,000, of whom no less than 5000 were directly involved in the industry. However, the cloth trade began to decline in the early sixteenth century and although many of the city's merchants switched to exporting surplus grain from France, Ghent slowly declined. Better times returned in the nineteenth century when Ghent industrialized and it's now the third largest city in Belgium. Ghent is a less immediately picturesque place than Bruges, but this is much to its advantage in so far as it's never overrun by tourists.
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