Ghent, Belgium

Since around 1997, car usage has been consigned to the past in the historic Centrum of this beautiful Belgian university city - Ghent, one of the best car-free vacation destinations. People will only find pedestrians, cyclists, trams, and buses passing through. In the surrounding central neighborhoods, the more recent Circulatieplan has made it so vehicles can only enter each specific area via a city ring road – instead of weaving between each district, causing congestion. It’s pretty clever and means its major attractions – the 10th-century Saint Bavo Cathedral, Gravensteen Castle, and the gorgeous quayside Graslei – aren’t impacted by beeping cars or exhaust fumes. Much like in Dutch cities, people will need to watch out for whizzing bicycles, though.

Historically, in 1997, Ghent's then-mayor Frank Beke announced plans to pedestrianize 35 hectares of the city center - turning it into Europe's largest car-free zone outside Venice. Shortly after, a local shop owner mailed him a bullet, concerned that the plan would turn the area into a ghost town. Today, Ghent's car-free city center is thriving, with playgrounds instead of parking lots and one of the best cycle lane networks in Europe. There are now weekly car-free Sundays when the entire city is closed to traffic - an event being replicated in Brussels and Antwerp, too.