"Somewhere within the dingy casing lay the ancient city", wrote
Graham Greene of BRUGES , "like a notorious jewel, too stared at, talked
of, trafficked over." And it's true that Bruges' reputation as one of
the most perfectly preserved medieval cities in western Europe has made
it the most popular tourist destination in Belgium, packed with visitors
throughout the summer. Inevitably, the crowds tend to overwhelm the
town's charms, but you would be mad to come to Flanders and miss the
place: its museums, to name just one attraction, hold some of the
country's finest collections of Flemish art; and its intimate, winding
streets, woven around a pattern of narrow canals and lined with gorgeous
ancient buildings, live up to even the most inflated hype.
By the fourteenth century Bruges shared effective control of the cloth
trade with its two great rivals, Ghent and Ypres, turning high-quality
English wool into thousands of items of clothing that were exported all
over the known world. It was an immensely profitable business, and made
the city a centre of international trade: at its height, the town was a
key member of the Hanseatic League, the most powerful economic alliance
in medieval Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century, though, Bruges
was in decline, partly because of a recession in the cloth trade, but
principally because the Zwin river - the city's vital link to the North
Sea - was silting up. By the 1530s the town's sea trade had collapsed
completely, and Bruges simply withered away. Frozen in time, Bruges
escaped damage in both world wars to emerge the perfect tourist
attraction
The City
The older sections of Bruges fan out from two central squares, Markt and
Burg. Markt , edged on three sides by nineteenth-century gabled
buildings, is the larger of the two, an impressive open space, on the
south side of which the octagonal Belfry (daily 9.30am-5pm; ¬2.50) was
built in the thirteenth century when the town was at its richest and
most extravagant. Inside, the staircase passes the room where the town
charters were locked for safekeeping, and an eighteenth-century carillon,
before emerging onto the roof. At the foot of the belfry, the
rectangular Hallen is a much-restored edifice dating from the thirteenth
century, its style and structure modelled on the cloth hall at Ieper (Ypres).
From the Markt, Breidelstraat leads through to Burg , whose southern
half is fringed by the city's finest group of buildings. One of the best
is the Heilig Bloed Basiliek (Basilica of the Holy Blood; April-Sept
daily 9.30am-noon & 2-6pm; Oct-March 10am-noon & 2-4pm, closed Wed pm;
free), named after a phial of the blood of Christ that dried out soon
after it was brought here in 1150 and then miraculously liquefied every
Friday at 6pm until 1325. The twelfth-century basilica divides into a
shadowy Lower Chapel, built to house a relic of St Basil, and an Upper
Chapel where the rock-crystal phial is stored in a grandiose silver
tabernacle given by Albert and Isabella of Spain in 1611. The Holy Blood
is still venerated here on Fridays at 8am and 3pm, and on Ascension Day
(mid-May) it is carried through the town in a colourful but solemn
procession, the Helig-Bloedprocessie. In the tiny Treasury (¬1) you'll
find the jewel-encrusted reliquary that holds the Holy Blood during the
procession.
To the left of the basilica, the Stadhuis has a beautiful, turreted
sandstone facade, a much-copied exterior that dates from 1376, though
its statues of the counts and countesses of Flanders are replacements.
Inside, the magnificent Gothic Hall of 1400 (daily 9.30am-5pm; ¬3.70) is
well worth a look, with vault-keys depicting New Testament scenes and
paintings commissioned in 1895 to illustrate the history of the town.
The price of admission covers entry to the former alderman's house, the
Renaissancezaal Brugse Vrije (daily 9.30am-12.30pm & 1.30-5pm), also on
the square, where there's just one exhibit, an enormous marble and oak
chimney piece located in the old Magistrates' Hall. A fine example of
Renaissance carving, it was completed in 1531 to celebrate the defeat of
the French at Pavia in 1525, and is dominated by figures of the Emperor
Charles V and his Austrian and Spanish relatives.
Heading south from the Burg, through the archway next to the Stadhuis,
it's a brief walk to both the eighteenth-century Vismarkt , and the
huddle of picturesque houses that make up Huidenvettersplein . Close by,
Dijver follows the canal to the Groeninge Museum at Dijver 12 (April-Sept
daily 9.30am-5pm; Oct-March Mon & Wed-Sun 9.30am-5pm; ¬6.20, combined
ticket with Memling, Arentshuis & Gruuthuse museums ¬9.90), which houses
a superb sample of Flemish paintings from the fourteenth to the
twentieth centuries. The best section is of early Flemish work,
including several canvases by Jan van Eyck, who lived and worked in
Bruges from 1430 until his death eleven years later, and the Judgement
of Cambyses by Gerard David. There's also work by Hieronymus Bosch, his
Last Judgement a trio of panels crammed with mysterious beasts and
scenes of awful cruelty, and the Moreel Triptych by Hans Memling. The
museum's selection of seventeenth-century paintings is more modest,
though there's a delightfully naturalistic Peasant Lawyer after Pieter
Bruegel the Younger.
At Dijver 17 the Gruuthuse Museum (same times as the Groeninge Museum;
¬3.20), sited in a rambling fifteenth-century mansion, has a varied
collection of fine and applied art, including fine intricately carved
altar pieces, musical instruments, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century
tapestries and many different types of furniture. Beyond the Gruuthuse,
the Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk (daily April-Sept 10am-noon & 2-5pm; Oct-March
Mon-Fri 10-noon, Sat 10am-noon & 2-4pm; free) is a massive shambles of
different dates and styles, among whose treasures is a delicate marble
Madonna and Child by Michelangelo, an influential early work brought
from Tuscany by a Flemish merchant. It is also home to the mausoleums
(¬1.80) of Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary of Burgundy, striking
examples of Renaissance carving. The earth beneath the mausoleums has
been dug out and mirrors now reveal the frescoes painted on the tomb
walls at the start of the sixteenth century.
Opposite the church, the St Jans Hospitaal complex contains a well-preserved
fifteenth-century dispensary and the small but important Memling Museum
. At the time of writing the museum was closed for rennovation, but the
collection of paintings are being held in the Groeninge Museum - ask at
the tourist office for details. Born near Frankfurt in 1433, Hans
Memling spent most of his working life in Bruges. Of his six paintings
on display, the Mystical Marriage of St Catherine , the middle panel of
an altarpiece painted between 1475 and 1479, is perhaps the most
notable. There's also the unusual Reliquary of St Ursula , a miniature
wooden Gothic church painted with the story of St Ursula and the 11,000
martyred virgins. Just north of the St Jans Hospitaal, Heilige
Geeststraat heads northwest to the Sint Salvators-kathedraal (St
Saviour's Cathedral), a replacement for the cathedral destroyed by the
French in the eighteenth century. From here, it's a quick stroll down to
the Begijnhof (daily 9am-6pm), a circle of whitewashed houses around a
tidy green. Nearby, the picturesque Minnewater was once used as a town
harbour, and still has a fifteenth-century lock gate.
|
from $81.12
USD