Bruges is beautiful. Let me say that first, before someone from Belgium arrives at my door with a pitchfork. It is almost offensively beautiful, actually. Canals slipping beneath little stone bridges, stepped gables lined up like carefully arranged pastries, church towers rising over red roofs, cobbled streets, old brick, lace, chocolate, horse-drawn carriages. Bruges has all the necessary ingredients for romance, and it knows exactly how to arrange them.
I had been in Antwerp that morning, and by afternoon we were in Bruges. We parked near ’t Zand and began walking toward the historic centre, eventually making our way to the Markt. It was one of those lovely European walks where you do not particularly need directions because the architecture keeps whispering, this way, darling, the prettier things are over here.
And Bruges certainly delivered the pretty things. But somewhere between ’t Zand and the Markt, and particularly once we got onto the water, I began having a slightly inconvenient thought: Bruges felt curated.
Not fake. That is an important distinction. Bruges is not Disneyland wearing a Flemish costume, despite moments when the crowds and horse carriages might tempt one into being unkind. Its history is very real, and its preservation is extraordinary. But I could feel the preservation.
Seeing Bruges from the Water
We took one of the canal tours, about thirty minutes long, which seemed the obvious thing to do. I love seeing cities from the water because the water usually shows you something the street does not. From a canal, a city tends to loosen its corset.
Amsterdam certainly does. You float past magnificent canal houses and then notice someone standing in a window making lunch. There are bicycles chained to railings, people walking dogs, deliveries being made, curtains half open, someone drinking coffee, somebody else apparently having a domestic disagreement three metres from your boat. Venice does it too. Behind all that impossible beauty, Venice still gives you laundry, boats, groceries, residents leaning out of windows and the occasional reminder that someone actually has to take the rubbish out.
Ghent, which I visited two years ago, gave me that same feeling. Its history seemed woven into ordinary life. Students moved through old streets because there is an actual university there, not because someone had hired attractive young people to improve the medieval atmosphere. Historic buildings were not simply admired. They were used.
Bruges, from the canal, was different. Everything was neat. Everything was clean. The façades were lovely. The gardens behaved themselves. The bridges appeared at precisely the moment a bridge ought to appear. I kept looking for the little intrusions of ordinary life that usually make an old city feel alive, and instead Bruges kept giving me more Bruges.
It was beautiful, and I began to get suspicious.
When a City Survives Too Beautifully
The history explains some of this. Bruges was once one of the great commercial cities of medieval Europe, enormously prosperous and internationally connected. But its economic importance declined, particularly as its maritime access became more difficult and trade shifted elsewhere. Later, while other Belgian cities were transformed by industrialisation, Bruges largely escaped the kind of wholesale nineteenth-century industrial redevelopment that might have erased much more of its medieval urban fabric.
That accident of economics became a gift to history, but preservation was not entirely accidental. By the nineteenth century, Bruges was also consciously restoring and protecting its historic appearance, including façade restoration encouraged in part by the city’s growing appeal to visitors. What we experience today is therefore not simply a medieval city that everybody forgot to demolish. It is a historic city that survived, was repaired, restored, protected and, yes, carefully presented.
Which brings me to the Belfry, because standing in the Markt and looking up at it, I had what I am sure was not the approved response: Frankenstein. And I mean that affectionately.
Frankenstein’s creature is remembered as a monster, but Victor chose beautiful parts when he made him. The unsettling thing was the assembly. Separate pieces had been brought together to create something new, and once you knew that, you could see the stitches.
That was what I saw when I looked at the Belfry of Bruges. It is magnificent, but it is not the untouched product of one medieval architect waking up one morning with a very ambitious sketch. The complex grew and changed through different building campaigns. Parts were added, altered and rebuilt. Fires happened. Centuries happened. Architectural tastes happened. Restoration happened.
The result is glorious, but you can read the layers. Suddenly I wasn’t looking at a perfectly preserved medieval tower. I was looking at a very beautiful architectural Frankenstein, assembled by history itself. And strangely, I liked it better for that because the seams made it honest.
Apparently, We Are Taking a Photograph Here
Later we found ourselves near the old Sint-Janshospitaal, St John’s Hospital, and came across the Eleonora Verbekehof. There were people taking photographs of themselves there, so naturally, I looked around.
Brick wall. Archway. Neatly clipped hedge. Green bench. Lovely old surroundings. I looked again. People were still taking photographs, and I remember thinking, What exactly are we photographing?
Apparently, quite a lot. The little courtyard is named for Eleonora Verbeke, an eighteenth-century nun who served as an apothecary at St John’s Hospital. It is also promoted as one of Bruges’ particularly photogenic spots, where the historic architecture and nearby towers can be beautifully framed.
Of course it is.
By this point Bruges and I had developed a relationship. Bruges would arrange something picturesque, people would photograph it, and I would stand slightly to one side wondering whether I was missing something. Naturally, I then took a photograph myself because I never claimed moral superiority.
Preserved, or Lived In?
I think that little courtyard finally helped me understand what had been bothering me. I did not dislike Bruges. Quite the opposite. There is far too much beauty there to dismiss it, and the extraordinary preservation of its historic centre deserves admiration. Cities are fragile things, and we have destroyed enough beautiful ones in the name of progress to appreciate a place that chose another path.
But preservation changes our relationship with a city. In Bruges, I often felt conscious that I was looking at history. In Ghent, I remember feeling as though people were simply living in it.
That difference may be entirely subjective. People obviously live in Bruges. They work there, raise children there, buy toothpaste there and presumably become thoroughly irritated when another tourist stops in the middle of the pavement to photograph a gable. But cities have personalities beyond their statistics, and the personalities of Bruges and Ghent felt remarkably different to me.
Ghent felt messy enough to forget I was supposed to admire it. Its old buildings had bicycles leaning against them. Students moved through medieval streets on their way somewhere decidedly unmedieval. The historic city seemed to be doing its daily chores while allowing us to look around.
Bruges, by comparison, seemed to have tidied up before we arrived. Perhaps that is why, despite all its beauty, I did not fall in love with it.
Beauty Does Not Always Require Falling in Love
There is a peculiar expectation attached to travel. We are supposed to fall in love constantly. We fall in love with Paris. We fall in love with Venice. We discover hidden gems. Places steal our hearts. Apparently, we travel around Europe scattering internal organs with remarkable abandon.
I did not leave my heart in Bruges. I left with photographs, memories, considerable admiration and a question I did not expect the city to give me: When does preservation become curation, and does that change how authentic a place feels?
I am not sure there is a correct answer, and perhaps there does not need to be one. Bruges’ immaculate quality may be precisely what makes other people adore it. What felt curated to me may feel magical to someone else. And perhaps my architect’s eye is partly to blame, because once I notice where history has been repaired, restored, added to and stitched together, I cannot politely pretend I haven’t seen it.
What I do know is that the Bruges I found most interesting was not the Bruges that looked perfect. It was the Bruges where I could see the stitches. And that brings me back to Ghent, a city I visited two years earlier and remember very differently.
Ghent deserves her own story, of course. Especially since there is a dragon involved, and apparently, according to a wonderfully suspicious old legend, Ghent stole it from Bruges.
Wink, wink.