And yet the series Erfgoed Wandelingen, or Heritage Walks, put together by Erfgoed Vlaanderen (Heritage Flanders) and Klara radio station are lively, fun and packed with interesting information. Unlike other tours, they cover an entire town in depth and offer visits to museums, concerts, exhibitions or castles as part of the tour. They are day-long events, usually running from 9.00 to 18.00 and cost next to nothing.

A tour takes you through a concise history of a Flemish town, including it’s social history, architecture and monuments – some of which are not normally open to the public. From town halls to churches to old fisherman’s houses and stories about locals, from labourers to royalty, you’ll find out what surprising circumstances really led to the creation of towns. The special activities, such as an organ concert in Tielt and a reading on Art Deco in Sint-Niklaas, make the tours “a lot more interactive”, explains Bart Jonckheere, public relations manager at Erfgoed Vlaanderen.

“Buildings are static, unmoving. There is a lot of dust on them,” says Jonckheere. “For us it’s important to make them alive. When people walk around them and hear about what has happened to them throughout the ages, they get to know their own culture, the richness of their local history. In combination with the special activities, you get a total understanding of the character of a place.”

Interestingly, these places do not include Flanders’ larger cities but its smaller ones from the art-mad Genk all the way down to little Hoegaarden, with its population of 5,800 (and apparently more to offer than beer, much to my surprise). Among the list of more than 20 towns, you’ll find some very recognisable names, like Ypres and Tongeren, and some you may have never heard before, like Lokeren, with its 16th century “market patent”, and Heist-op-den-Berg, a town more than 1,000 years old.

“What we have seen is that in cities like Antwerp or Bruges, a lot of opportunities to learn about the cities already exist,” explains Jonckheere. Getting outside of these Flemish centres gives the heritage organisation a chance to introduce the public to the often fascinating – but little-known – social history and consequential events that have shaped the region.

All that’s left now is to re-name them to reflect the kind of modern heritage organisation that Erfgoed Vlaanderen – with its motto “Future for our past” – really is. Urban tracks? City prints?

Regardless, the walks last through October, so pick your towns and find out just what makes Flanders tick.

The heritage tours are all in Dutch. If this is a problem for you, keep your eyes open for a special English tour organised by Erfgoed Vlaanderen and Flanders Today in September!

www.erfgoedvlaanderen.be