Patershol is small. It covers about four and a half hectares behind the , with the Leie along the south side. The medieval street plan is still there and nearly every lane is cobbled.
Leather was worked here until the eighteenth century, and some street names are still the trades. is the cordwainers. The was a canal until 1872, when it was filled in.
Magistrates and lawyers attached to the courts in the built houses here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The larger brick and sandstone fronts are theirs. Industry arrived in the nineteenth century and those houses were divided up. Gardens were built over, which is how the beluiken appeared. One of those courtyards is still there off the .
After the First World War it was a poor quarter of lodging houses and bars. Clearance plans were drawn up after the Second World War and never carried out. The city restored the worst houses instead, and the district was protected as a townscape on 3 September 1981.
The on the Vrouwebroersstraat is the oldest and largest of the big complexes here. It was an abbey refuge before the Carmelites took it over in 1287. Kunsthal Gent has been in it since January 2019. The Kinderen Alijnshospitaal on the was an almshouse founded in 1363, and the Huis van Alijn museum is in it now.
has the traffic and most of the shopfronts. The lanes behind it are narrower. The Patersholfeesten are held around 15 August, with music on the .
