What the cathedral treasury and the tapestries in St. Salvator's hold

A cathedral built from a lost one

Walk west from the Markt along Steenstraat and a brick tower rises above the shops. This is St. Salvator's Cathedral, seat of the bishop of Bruges. It draws fewer visitors than the Church of Our Lady, which makes it one of the calmer large interiors in the city, and it holds a remarkable amount of art for a building many people walk straight past.

Its story explains why. For most of its history it was simply the leading parish church of Bruges. It only became a cathedral in the nineteenth century, after the old cathedral of St. Donatian on the Burg had been torn down. A great deal of what hangs inside today, from paintings to coats of arms, was moved here from that demolished building.

From parish church to cathedral

Tradition credits St. Eligius with a chapel on this spot around the year 646, though the historical evidence points instead to a ninth-century foundation. The chapel became a parish church in 1089. Fires in 1116 and 1166 destroyed an early Romanesque building, and the lower part of today's tower still contains stonework from that period.

The church was rebuilt in Gothic style between 1250 and 1350. A further fire in 1358 led to another enlargement between 1480 and 1550, when the ambulatory and five radiating chapels were added around the choir under the direction of Jan van den Poele.

When the diocese of Bruges was restored in 1834, St. Salvator's was named cathedral in place of St. Donatian's, which had been demolished in 1799. It inherited works of art rescued from its predecessor and was raised to the rank of minor basilica in 1921. Anyone curious about the vanished cathedral on the Burg and what became of its contents can follow the story at /burg/.

The tower and what it tells you

A fire in 1839 badly damaged the tower. It was rebuilt between 1843 and 1846 in a neo-Romanesque style by the English architect Robert Chantrell working with the local builder Pierre Buyck, and the architect Eugène Carpentier added the spire in 1871. The tower now stands seventy-nine meters tall, the heaviest silhouette in the Bruges skyline.

Standing back from the tower, the history reads in distinct layers. At the base is the oldest masonry, surviving from the Romanesque church that burned in 1166. Above it rises Gothic brick, and at the top sit the round-arched stages Chantrell added after the 1839 fire, finished by Carpentier's spire. It is a medieval base wearing a Victorian crown, and the contrast is why it looks so unlike the slender Gothic spires found elsewhere in the city.

The tower is best appreciated from the small square behind the cathedral, where the full height and the change in masonry are easiest to see, or from above at the Belfry, where its bulk stands out clearly against the rest of the skyline.

Inside the nave

Inside, pale stone arches carry the eye down a long nave toward the choir. The carved rood screen, crowned by a statue of God the Father by Artus Quellinus the Younger, is one of the first things visitors notice. In 1935 the screen and the organ were both moved toward the back of the church, opening a clear view through to the choir so the full length of the building reads as one space.

Seventeen paintings by Jacob van Oost hang in the church, giving a sense of seventeenth-century religious painting in Bruges that complements the earlier work kept in the treasury. Above the choir stalls are the coats of arms of the Order of the Golden Fleece, placed there after the chapter the order held in this church in 1478, a reminder of how closely the building was tied to the ducal city long before it became a cathedral.

The tapestries

Along the walls of the nave hang large eighteenth-century Brussels tapestries, woven in 1731 by Jasper van der Borcht after designs by the painter Jan van Orley. The painted designs used to guide the weavers are kept in the treasury rather than displayed alongside the finished tapestries, so visitors who want to compare the two have to see both spaces.

The tapestries are easy to walk past quickly in a church this size, but they reward a slower look: the scale, the color, and the way the designs translate painted compositions into woven form are all part of what makes St. Salvator's worth more than half an hour.

The treasury

The treasury holds some of the finest painting in Bruges outside its major museums, including work associated with Rogier van der Weyden, Dieric Bouts, and Hugo van der Goes, three names central to the story told at Flemish Masters. Also on display are the Hippolytus Triptych and a Calvary from around 1520, along with the painted designs for the nave tapestries.

Because the cathedral is a working place of worship, services take priority over visiting, and the treasury keeps its own separate arrangements for access. Anyone planning to see it should check the cathedral's own current information before arriving, rather than assume it will simply be available on the day, and should be ready to adjust plans around Mass times or feast days when parts of the building may be closed to sightseers.

Planning the visit

Allow about half an hour for the church itself, and more time if the treasury interests you, since it sits apart from the main circuit of the nave and choir. The cathedral has been restored in careful stages: exterior work began in 1976, interior restoration started in 2011, the nave and side aisles were finished by 2013, and the choir was restored between 2014 and 2017. The result is a bright, clean interior in which the colors of both paintings and tapestries show well.

St. Salvator's is usually quieter than the other great churches in the center, even in busy periods, which makes it a useful pause from the crowds along Steenstraat. Dress modestly, as in any working church, and keep conversation low. From the cathedral, Heilige-Geeststraat leads south in about five minutes to Our Lady, St. John's Hospital, and the museums along the Dijver, making it an easy stop on a longer walk through the historic center.