A short ferry ride across Ostend harbour gets you to a strange area of abandoned military installations, redundant ships and alternative energy projects.
Keep going until you reach a mysterious nineteenth-century brick fortress half buried in the dunes. It was built by Napoleon and used by German soldiers during the Second World War.
More recently, in 2006, it was restored by the Bruges architects Govaert & Vanhoutte to create a fortress museum and café-restaurant with a terrace looking out on the dunes.
The fortress is hosting an exhibition of contemporary street art organised by Raphaël Cruyt, co-founder of the acclaimed (but now closed) MIMA museum in Brussels.
Working with the team behind Ostend’s Crystal Ship Festival, Cruyt has put together an exhibition titled Subway Art that looks at the emergence of street art in the 1960s, the art of the tag and current graffiti art.
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.
