This is the smallest pub in Ghent, but it has a remarkable history.
Its tiny bar has room for just 27 people.....twenty on the ground floor and seven in a little attic. The terrace outside is larger than the cafe.
It started life as the Tripe House in the mid 1500s, attached to the Great Butchers' Hall, built over a hundred years before to replace the wooden original. In the Tripe House the poorer citizens could buy the cheap meat offal and entrails. The terrace of Galgenhuisje is slightly lower than the street. This is because the square had by then become the fish market and when the new Hall was built where the fishermen moored their boats, three passages were made beneath it so that this could continue. While the fish market remained there until 1689, at some point the square also became the site of the city's gallows. The café, which has been licensed since 1776, was named the Gallows House. Against the facade of the Great Butchers' Hall, the condemned had to wait for the execution of their sentence at the gallows, and could be given a final beer! Behind the sloping extra roof at the back, the hooks and the brackets which fastened the captives are still there. They were also used as pillories for those sentenced to the lesser punishment of public humiliation.