Last updated: September 03, 2015


World Travel

Cultural riches in Bruges

bruges escape feb 2

Begijnhof, Bruges. Picture: Lonely Planet Source: National Features

bruges feb 2 escape

Courtyard Groeningemuseum, Bruges. Picture: Lonely Planet Traveller Magazine Source: National Features

AS part of his BBC series on the art of the Low Countries, Andrew Graham-Dixon explores the legacy of Bruges, once the art centre of the Western world and home to the pre-Renaissance Flemish masters.

Venice of the North

Many European cities with canals - Amsterdam, sometimes even Manchester and Liverpool - are described as the Venice of the North. It's not true of those places but it is true of Bruges.


Travelling the canals, you see the way the city's architecture is orientated towards the water, and only by doing that can you really understand the miracle that Bruges is.

The whole of the Low Countries - Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg - represents a miracle of human ingenuity over a hostile environment. In many places the sea level is higher than that of flat land, so the fact that it was drained in the 11th and 12th centuries to an extent that cities thrive is a great achievement.

In Belgium, there are weird relationships between land and water - you'll be driving along a road and suddenly realise you're going under a canal. But the advantage for the Belgians, having created cities like Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp, is that they were all connected by this network of waterways. Because these waterways were the arteries of trade, Bruges became rich during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

On the canals, you realise that the houses don't face the water because it's pretty but because that's where business is. Bruges' prime businesses, such as brewing and textiles, which reached their zenith in the 14th century, were made possible by manipulating water.



The land around Bruges wasn't fertile, and people couldn't live on fish alone, so they produced things; beer and textiles like their famous lace, which could be transported along the canal network. Canals, towpaths, horses pulling barges - this was all cutting-edge technology, developed in Belgium and later taken up everywhere else.

That's why Bruges is such a magnificent city, it was created by sheer force of will. On the canals it's possible to feel all that, and it's simultaneously a very peaceful way to see the city. Bruges is a touristy place and can feel crowded but on the water you're removed from the hustle and bustle.


Take a tour of Bruges in a private boat ( Or join a half-hour canal cruise from one of five central jetties.

Ancient markets

The heart of the city is Markt, a beautiful open market square. It's surrounded by gabled medieval buildings and the former market halls. The old stone slabs which traders used to cut and sell meat and other produce, like cloth, have been preserved.

Looming over it all is the Belfort, the city's 13th-century belfry -  the scene of a particularly dramatic moment in the film In Bruges. In a place as flat as Belgium, the only way to get a view - to really get a sense of the lie of the land and see how the city works - is to get up high. From the top of the tower you look down on to a web of canals, on to the little roof terraces that the people of the city are so fond of cultivating, and out across the flat landscape towards distant wind farms.

Around the corner, Bruges' fabulous fish market is still very much a working market. The Brugeoise love their fish; fresh, raw herring is the Belgian equivalent of Japanese sushi.

A great delicacy, herring is eaten with raw onions and gherkin. A really nice thing to do is to stop at the fish market, buy a load of herring and make yourself a little picnic, with a couple of bottles of Belgian beer.

The Romans called the Belgians a "miserable tribe of herring-eating primitives", but the Belgians had the last laugh when they created Bruges. 

The Belfort (open daily 9.30am-5pm, last tickets 4.15pm).

The fish market is close to the Burg, along Blinde Ezelstraat (8am-1pm, closed Sun and Mon).

Bruges on canvas

During the 15th century, Bruges became a centre for a stunningly new artistic technique: oil painting. Its great masters were Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden, and their work can be seen at Bruges' Groeningemuseum.

It isn't a huge gallery but its collection is spectacular. It has the wonderful Madonna with Canon van der Paele by Jan van Eyck. At the same time this was painted, 1436, the Italians were using fresco, painting murals on freshly laid plaster.

It gives vivid images but not the sense that you can actually touch someone's arm or see the moistness in the corner of their eye  -  as with oil.

Oil paint's potential was discovered in Flanders in the 1430s. We're not sure how it was discovered, but it completely transformed the history of Western art.

Perhaps because the Low Countries' culture came from a world of near nothingness, derided by the ancient Romans as a watery wilderness, they loved art that was rich. In Flemish painting you get everything - gold, silver, jewels; the Madonna wearing something beautiful; castles in the landscape.

A lot of the Groeningemuseum's great works were once in the city's churches and cathedrals.

Hugo van der Goes' St Hippolyte Triptych was restored by the museum, but is now back in its original home, St Saviour's Cathedral.

The painting is a transfixing and weird depiction of a saint about to be torn in four by men on horseback. The scene is painted within an inviting landscape, and there's this beautiful sky in the background. It's odd and makes you ask how something so horrible could be happening in such a peaceful place. 

The Groeningemuseum, Dijver 12 (closed Mon).

St Saviour's Cathedral, Steenstraat (closed Mon morning).


You can really sense the city's past at St-Janshospitaal, a 12th-century hospital building which is a wonderful mix of Flanders' Middle Ages culture.

Now a museum, it's a reminder that although the canals were good for business, they also brought the plague to the city, and the way Bruges ministered to their sick was through religion.

The hospital's chapel was a pilgrimage site. It held the relics of St Ursula, a virgin killed by Huns people around the fourth or fifth century while returning from a pilgrimage to Rome. 

In the 15th century, the hospital commissioned the artist Hans Memling to create a shrine for the relics. Memling was described by the art historian Erwin Panofsky as "the very model of a major minor master", which is a highbrow joke taken from Gilbert and Sullivan's operas.

In other words, he was the perfect second-rate artist.

But his shrine really is wonderful, bridging the gap between the medieval foundations of the hospital and its Renaissance incarnation.

Memling took the old reliquary containing Ursula's remains - a wooden box, which people had been coming to touch for hundreds of years - and then housed it in a sort of dolls' house in the shape of a miniature church.

On this he painted the whole story of Ursula's journey: her life and death.

Flemish oil painting was born out of manuscript illumination, of which Bruges was a great centre. Walking around Memling's shrine, it's clear to see how one gave rise to the other. It's a bit like the pages of a story book, put on to the outside of a box.

It's no surprise that Belgium also produced the artist and comics writer Herge; Memling's box is almost like a Renaissance Tintin tale, unfolding frame by frame. Ursula even dies being watched by her little dog, like a mournful little Snowy.

The paintings are full of such wonderful details. The pope, as well as looking serious, receiving all these virgins in Rome, has the appearance of a naughty schoolboy. The characters are wearing these fantastically fine fabrics, so even when you're watching Ursula being killed, you're also checking out what she's wearing.

Memling knew perfectly well that people would come from far and wide to be in the presence of Ursula's reliquary. This shrine was a big tourist attraction, drawing people to Bruges.

So he made it an advert for what the city had to offer. It was saying: "Come on a pilgrimage, say your prayers, let's hope that your husband recovers from his illness. And before you leave, why don't you do a bit of shopping?"

In the art of Flanders - especially the Renaissance art, which I love -  there's this wonderful collision between spirituality and materialism. 

St-Janshospitaal, Mariastraat 38 (closed Mon).

The Begijnhof

A message delivered by St-Janshospitaal's was: "If you're rich and you want to go to heaven, you'd better make damned sure that you give some money away and help the poor."

Another manifestation of that medieval structure of faith is the Bruges begijnhof: a self-contained cluster of houses built around a central garden and church, and contained within a protective wall.

A beguinage, to use the French word, was like a self-appointed nunnery that pious, well-to-do laywomen would join; a community from which they would go out and do good deeds. There are very few beguinages left now, and the begijnhof in Bruges is the only one I've seen.

The rise of the beguinages was highly connected to that of the Crusades. In the 12th century, large numbers of Low Countries men went off to the Holy Land, and many never came back. "What are we going to do with ourselves - what are we going to do with the money we have?" their widows were left wondering.

"Let's join a beguinage. Let's use our money to create a self-sustaining community and then we'll grow food for the poor."

It's part of the "give and take" culture that's so important in this part of the world; on the one hand, it's very business-like, but on the other hand it's a very God-fearing society where money, if you give it away, can take you to heaven.

The begijnhof originally dates from the 13th century and it's a wonderfully well-preserved little capsule. It opens at the crack of dawn, and at that hour it's a very tranquil place -  pleasant and meditative. It gives you a feel for the sense of piety that was so strong in Bruges' medieval culture.

Walking around, you'll come across a little museum where you can see the living quarters of the begijn women and get a real sense of how they lived. They're long gone now, of course today the site is occupied by a convent of nuns but it's still a beautifully calm, well-ordered and very modest place. 

The begijnhof is near the Minnewater lake (6.30am-9pm). Inside the entrance to the begijnhof, 't Begijnhuisje is a small museum (10am-5pm Mon to Sat; 2.30-5pm Sun).




Cruising there

FLY free to Europe when you book a 15-day Romantic Rhine & Moselle River Cruise on the Scenic Diamond with Scenic Tours, from $7690 a person, twin share, including return flights and taxes, beverages, meals, activities, entertainment, private butler, Wi-Fi, airport transfers, tipping and gratuities.

Guests will see Reichsburg Castle, the canals of Bruges and Amsterdam, the vineyards of Alsace and indulge in waffles, beers and chocolate in Belgium and dining in a Dutch village. Also visits Amsterdam, Strasbourg, Bernkastel's wineries and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Price based on September 4 departure and must be booked by June 30.

Ph 1300 723 642 or see  

More: Lonely Planet's Pocket Bruges and Brussels guide; or download the West Flanders chapter of Belgium and Luxembourg from

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