Walking round the Burg, from the gilded Old Civil Registry to the lost cathedral under the hotel

Where Bruges began

The Markt is the square of trade; the Burg, a two-minute walk east, is the square of power. This is one of the oldest cores of the city, a walled fortress with gates, standing where a possible Roman road met the river Reie. In the tenth century Count Arnulf I enlarged the stronghold into a fortified enclosure of about one and a half hectares, the seed from which the rest of Bruges grew outward over the following centuries.

Today the walls are long gone, but the Burg still gathers the buildings of government around one open space, much as it always has. It is smaller and quieter than the Markt, and many visitors find it the more beautiful of the two, with the elaborate front of the City Hall filling its south side and drawing the eye the moment you step in from Breidelstraat.

Counts, canons, and a cathedral

Between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries the western side of the Burg held one of the residences of the counts of Flanders, known as the Steen. The fortress had two halves: the southern part served civil government, while the northern part belonged to the Church, with the great church of St. Donatian and its chapter of canons presiding over religious life inside the walls.

St. Donatian's became a cathedral in 1559, when Bruges was made a bishopric, giving the city a status it had not held before. It did not survive the French period: the church was demolished in 1799, which opened up the north side of the square and made the Burg, at a little over a hectare, slightly larger than the Markt. Its foundations can still be seen in the cellars of the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the square, a quiet reminder of what once stood there.

The loss matters for visitors in another way. Jan van Eyck, the most famous painter to work in Bruges, was buried in St. Donatian's in 1441, and his grave was lost with the building. Readers who want to see what survives of his work and that of his contemporaries elsewhere in the city should look at /flemish-masters/. Only the foundations under the hotel remain of the church itself, with nothing visible from the square to mark the spot.

The City Hall

The City Hall was built between 1376 and 1421, with Count Louis of Flanders laying the foundation stone, and it is one of the oldest city halls in the former Burgundian Netherlands. Its late Gothic front, with tall windows, niches of statues, and slender turrets, set a model later followed by the city halls of Brussels, Ghent, Leuven, and Oudenaarde, which makes the Bruges building the starting point for a wider story of civic architecture.

Upstairs is the Gothic Hall, created between 1895 and 1905 by combining two older council chambers into one. Its double-vaulted timber ceiling is carved with medallions of New Testament scenes, prophets, and saints, and the walls carry murals by Albrecht De Vriendt showing moments from the city's history, painted in the same decades the hall itself was remade.

The hall and its fireplaces are neo-Gothic work rather than medieval survivals, but the building remains the seat of the city government to this day, which gives the visit an unusual edge: this is a working town hall as much as a historic monument, and the upper floor shows how nineteenth-century Bruges chose to picture its own past.

What you actually see

Walk round the square clockwise from the City Hall to take in the sequence properly. To its right stands the Old Civil Registry, a narrow Renaissance building with gilded details that catch the light differently through the day, and between the two runs the arched passage of the Blinde Ezelstraat, which leads down to the canal and the fish market. In the corner to the left is the Basilica of the Holy Blood, its two chapels stacked one above the other; for the relic it houses and the rules around seeing it, see /holy-blood/.

On the west side is the former Landhuis of the Brugse Vrije, the Liberty of Bruges, which once governed the countryside around the city; its rear front faces the canal of the Groenerei. The north side, where the cathedral once stood, is lined with trees, the baroque Provost's House, and the modern hotel, with a bronze sculpture of two lovers standing quietly in the open space, a modern touch among the older fronts.

The square carries a darker memory too. In the night of the thirteenth to the fourteenth of February 1967 a bomb went off at the entrance of the courthouse, shattering the stained-glass windows of the City Hall, the courthouse, and the basilica. Despite long investigations, the attack was never solved, and it remains one of the unexplained episodes in the recent history of the square, rarely mentioned on a first visit but worth knowing as you look at the restored glass.

How to visit

The square is always open and free, and it is worth crossing more than once: in the morning, when the sun lights the City Hall front, and in the evening, when the fronts are floodlit and the day visitors have gone. Allow a quarter of an hour just to look at the buildings from the square itself before heading inside any of them, since the fronts reward a slow circuit on foot.

The Gothic Hall inside the City Hall is visited with a ticket from Musea Brugge, and on busy days it is sensible to check the Musea Brugge site for time slots before you come; general advice on planning ahead for sights across the city is at /booking-ahead/. Allow half an hour for the hall and the historical rooms beside it, more if the murals and medallions invite a closer look.

The Basilica of the Holy Blood has its own arrangements and is often busy in the middle of the day, so visitors with a tight schedule may prefer an early or late visit. The Burg is also a stage: open-air concerts and events are held here in summer, and the square fills for the procession of the Holy Blood, so it is worth checking /when-to-come/ for the calendar before fixing a date.

Where to go next

Leave through the Blinde Ezelstraat arch and you come out on the canal at the fish market, a few steps from the Rozenhoedkaai, one of the most photographed viewpoints in the city; details are at /rozenhoedkaai/. Walk the other way, along Breidelstraat, and you are back on the Markt under the Belfry, closing the short loop between the two great squares of Bruges.

The quiet quays of the Groenerei begin just behind the Liberty of Bruges, and they are the best short walk from here, away from the crowds of the main squares; see /groenerei/ for what to expect along the water. Either direction makes a natural next step after a slow circuit of the Burg, and both can be covered on foot in a few minutes without retracing your steps.