Bruges

Landmarks

What I would eat first.

Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.

• Basiliek van het Heilig Bloed 1,500 points

  Easy to walk past. It is wedged into a corner of the Burg with a face narrower than the neighbours on either side, and from out here it looks like one small thing. Go in, and then go up. That is all I am telling you.

• Begijnhof Ten Wijngaerde 500 points

  You get in over a bridge and through a gate, and the noise stops at the gate as if somebody had turned a tap. Go slowly and go quietly, because this is not a monument. It is an address.

• Belfort 500 points

  This is what you have been using to find your way all day, noticed or not. Before you decide about the climb, go in under the arch: the halls below hold a yard that most people cross the Markt without ever seeing.

• Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk 500 points

  It shows up at the end of half the lanes on this level, so you will meet it long before you reach it. When you do, go in. One marble figure inside was shipped here from Italy in 1506 and never went home, and it is very probably the only one its maker ever let leave the country.

• Ankerplein 250 points

  A wide spot in a long street on the way south, and the shortest stop on this whole round. Ten seconds, standing still in the middle of it. Not every bite is a main course.

• Augustijnenbrug 250 points

  The far north end of this round, where the crowds thin out. Three low arches over the rei, and nothing at all to hurry for. Something on this one only turns up once you stop walking, so stop.

• Gruuthusemuseum 250 points

  The big one on the Dijver with its feet in the water. Come at it from the yard on Gruuthusestraat rather than from the far bank, and take the little bridge beside it on your way past. The people who paid for all of this were not selling anything you would guess.

• Sint-Salvatorskathedraal 250 points

  The heavy west end of the Old Town, and the one to walk around before you walk into. Its big blunt face is a stack of different rock: grey-green fieldstone, tufa, brick, Tournai and Gobertange, in three goes with a moulding drawn across at every join. I could read that wall all afternoon, and once did.

• Stadhuis Brugge 250 points

  Cross to the far side before you look at it, because from underneath you only get the lower half. Then go inside and look up. The best thing in the building is on the ceiling, and it is made of painted wood.

Why here

Somebody stood here and decided.

Bruges sits on the border between the coastal plain and the sand country, and it grew on three sand ridges along the Reie, the river that ran through the whole town from south to north, from the Minnewater up to the Dampoort. Wet ground everywhere else. Three dry backs to stand on. The Old Town has the shape the subsoil allowed it, which is why the lanes bend the way they do.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Who ruled

Everyone who thought they owned this.

I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.

863–1384

The counts of Flanders. Baldwin, the first of them, reached this region around 863, and the administrative centre, the castrum, was on the Burg, where the Flemish count lived. Arnulf I built that stronghold out into a seat of power with imperial airs: a hectare and a half behind a stone wall with four gates, one for each direction. The wall and the gates are gone. The square is still called the Burg, and I am still lying in it.

Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be, www.visitbruges.be

1384–1482

Burgundy. Duke Philip the Bold married the heiress of the Flemish count, the count died in 1384, and Flanders went over with her. From the 14th century the Burgundian court sat here in the Prinsenhof, and that was a hard shove for art and for everything that hangs off art. This is the century Bruges still lives on. The Prinsenhof is a street now, and you will walk down it.

Sources: www.visitbruges.be, inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1482–1830

Then everybody else. The duchess died in 1482, the trade moved on to Antwerp, and Bruges belonged in turn to the Spanish, the Austrians, the French and the Dutch. In 1614 the second town wall was rebuilt into a bastioned fortification, and the belt it left is still the edge of the Old Town. For three and a half centuries the question of who held this place was answered a long way from here, and the answer kept changing.

Sources: www.visitbruges.be, inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

1830–

Belgium. A provisional government declared independence on 4 October 1830. After three and a half centuries as a piece of somebody else's larger holdings, Bruges got a country roughly its own size. I stayed exactly where I was, as always.

Sources: www.belgium.be

Three facts

Three things I know about this place.

1. Look at Bruges on a map and the old centre is an egg, drawn by a late-medieval belt of fortification. It took three goes to get there. The first town wall came in 1127 and 1128. By the end of the 13th century the place had outgrown it and a second, much wider one had become necessary. In 1614 that second one was rebuilt as a bastioned fortification. A town that has to draw itself a bigger outline twice has been eating well, and I know how that goes.

   Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

2. The Zwin formed in 1134 and handed this town a way out to the sea. Add the pull of the county of Flanders and the growth of European maritime trade, and by the 13th and 14th centuries Bruges was one of the largest trading metropolises in Europe and a serious international money market. From the 16th century that part was over and the population fell hard. As the trade drifted away the link to the sea silted up, though the city did everything it could to hold it open. Being too poor to knock anything down is why there is so much of it left to walk on.

   Sources: inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be, www.visitbruges.be

3. Bruges was quiet for three hundred years and then became famous for being quiet. Readers of a novel of 1892, Bruges-la-Morte, met a somewhat sleepy but distinctly mysterious place, the city's heritage was rediscovered, and the first careful steps into tourism followed. Since 2000 the entire historic core has been a UNESCO world heritage core zone. Not one building. The core. Every lane on this level lies inside it, which makes this the only meal I know of that is protected by treaty.

   Sources: www.visitbruges.be, inventaris.onroerenderfgoed.be

Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.

• 130streets
• 1,194dots
• 18.1km of street
• 24.0km on foot
• 6.9hours at a stroll