Following the ring of the ramparts on foot or by bike past the four city gates

Why they matter

Bruges was a walled city until the end of the eighteenth century, and the green ring of parkland that surrounds the old town today follows the line of those walls. Four of the old gates still stand on it. They are some of the largest medieval structures in the city, and they mark the points where travelers from Ghent, Kortrijk and the coast once arrived at the city's edge, under guard, before being allowed to pass inside.

Visitors rarely seek them out, because they lie at the edge of the old town, well beyond the Markt and the Burg. That is exactly why they are worth the walk: reaching a gate means leaving the souvenir shops behind and crossing quiet residential streets to the ramparts, where the city suddenly gives way to water, trees and open sky.

None of the four requires a ticket or a plan. They can be folded into any day in Bruges as a change of pace, a half-hour of walking between a museum visit and a meal, or the spine of a longer loop that takes in windmills, parkland and the open green edge of town most visitors never see.

Three rings of walls

The defenses of Bruges were built in three phases. In the early ninth century the Burg itself was fortified. In 1127 and 1128 a first city wall was built, following the line of what is now the inner ring of canals; its gates are mentioned in thirteenth-century texts, but no pictures of them survive, so their exact appearance is a matter of scholarly reconstruction rather than record.

In 1297 a second, much larger wall was begun, enclosing the oval that still defines the old town today. It had seven gates, connecting Bruges to Ghent, Kortrijk, the towns to the north and the coast. Three of them, the Dampoort, the Boeveriepoort and the Katelijnepoort, have disappeared entirely; the Kruispoort, the Gentpoort, the Ezelpoort and the Smedenpoort remain and can still be visited.

The gates were built, pulled down and rebuilt as the city's fortunes changed with trade and war. A treaty after the conflict with France in the early fourteenth century required Bruges to dismantle its fortifications, and much of the stone visible now comes from rebuilding carried out in the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries by the city's own master masons.

The Kruispoort and the Gentpoort

The Kruispoort, at the eastern end of Langestraat, is the most complete of the four. After an earlier gate was destroyed, it was rebuilt from 1366, and between 1401 and 1406 it grew into a complex of a main building, two bridges, eight towers and a foregate. A contract dated 16 August 1400 in the city archives names the builders, Jan van Oudenaarde and Master Martin. Today two round towers flank the gate passage, whose vaults rest on corbels carved with angels.

The foregate was removed around 1760, and the building was restored between 1969 and 1972, and again in 2001 and 2002, leaving the structure seen today largely intact and recognizable as a defensive complex rather than a single archway.

The Gentpoort guarded the road toward Ghent and shows the same pattern of damage and rebuilding. First built in 1297 and rebuilt between 1361 and 1363, it was badly damaged in 1382 when Ghent's citizens attacked the city. Around 1401 to 1407 Maarten van Leuven and Jan van Oudenaarde rebuilt it standing in the moat, reached through a gatehouse and two drawbridges, a design that still shapes how the gate is approached on foot.

The Ezelpoort and the Smedenpoort

The Ezelpoort, in the north-west, was first built in 1297. A new gate with two monumental towers followed in 1369, and Jan van Oudenaarde rebuilt its bridge in 1385. In 1615 the foregate and the tops of the towers were demolished, and in 1677 a small bell tower was added in their place. Like the Smedenpoort, it stands surrounded by water on all sides, and it was restored between 1991 and 1993.

The Smedenpoort, on the western side of the old town, dates from 1297 to 1299 and was rebuilt in 1367 and 1368. It carries the city's most macabre souvenir. In 1691 a plot to let French soldiers into Bruges by night through this gate was uncovered, and the conspirator, François van der Straeten, was executed on 26 June 1691, his head set on an iron pin on the gate itself.

The skull visible today on the Smedenpoort is a bronze replica rather than the original, but the story is told at the gate much as it has always been. In 2012 footbridges were added on both sides so walkers and cyclists can pass the gate apart from road traffic, which makes it one of the more comfortable gates to stop and look at closely.

What you actually see

Each gate is a solid block of brick and stone, with round towers, a vaulted passage and slate roofs, standing either astride a road or on an island surrounded by the outer canal. Seen from a distance on the ramparts, they read as fortified silhouettes against the parkland; close up, the brickwork and the scale of the towers make clear how substantial these structures were meant to be.

It is worth standing inside the gate passages of the Kruispoort and the Gentpoort and looking up. The vaults, the carved corbels and the grooves and fittings of the old closing mechanisms are still visible, a reminder that these were working defenses with doors, portcullises and guards rather than decorative arches.

The ramparts around the gates are now a landscaped park rather than a fortified perimeter. The fortifications were dismantled after 1782 and turned into green walks between 1853 and 1915, and the whole ring has been protected since 2016. Near the Kruispoort the windmills stand on their mounds, and in the south the Poertoren, built between 1398 and 1401, overlooks the Minnewater.

Walking or cycling the ring

The gates are seen from outside, from the ramparts and the bridges, at any time and at no cost. The Kruispoort housed a war museum until around 1988, but today the four gates are best treated as monuments to walk around rather than places to go inside; check with Visit Bruges directly if an interior visit is what is wanted.

The easiest gate to reach from the center is the Kruispoort, about fifteen minutes' walk east along Langestraat, which can be combined with the windmills and the Jerusalem Church for a longer eastern loop that covers some of the quietest ground in the city.

The Gentpoort is a short walk south-east of the Beguinage area, and the Smedenpoort is the gate most visitors pass walking into town from the west. A full walk round the ramparts linking all four gates takes a couple of hours at a relaxed pace; getting around has advice on covering the same ground faster by bike.