Historic Centre (Markt & Burg)

A look around

What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.

1/6

Where it sits

The circle is Historic Centre and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.

How far is everything?

From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.

• Belgian beer4 min walk340 m
• Bonifacius Bridge5 min walk415 m
• Concertgebouw & 't Zand6 min walk533 m
• Jerusalem Chapel & lace8 min walk705 m
• The Beguinage11 min walk890 m
• The windmills & ramparts12 min walk992 m
• Minnewater (Lake of Love)13 min walk1.1 km

On your doorstep

What you’re living next to if you stay here.

• 1.The Belfry & Markt — The 83-metre medieval bell tower over the market square, leaning slightly, with 366 steps up to a carillon and a view across the whole red-roofed city to the sea. The symbol of Bruges; climb early to beat the queue, then take in the gabled guild houses ringing the Markt below.
• 2.A canal boat tour — Glide the medieval canals that earned Bruges the name 'Venice of the North' — under humpback bridges, past the backs of old houses and mossy waterside walls you'd never otherwise see. Touristy, brief and completely worth it; the loveliest half-hour in town, best in soft evening light.
• 3.The Burg & City Hall — The old seat of power, a square of extraordinary architecture tucked behind the Markt — the fairy-tale Gothic City Hall with its gilded facade and a vaulted, muralled Gothic Hall inside. Smaller and quieter than the Markt, and arguably even more beautiful.
• 4.Church of Our Lady — Its brick spire is the tallest in the Low Countries, and inside is a genuine treasure — Michelangelo's serene marble 'Madonna and Child', the only sculpture of his to leave Italy in his lifetime. A small, unmissable brush with a giant of the Renaissance.
• 7.The Groeningemuseum — A jewel-box of a museum holding the 'Flemish Primitives' — the astonishing, minutely detailed early-Netherlandish paintings of Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling, made in this city when it was one of Europe's richest. A short, world-class art hit; van Eyck alone is worth the ticket.
• 8.Basilica of the Holy Blood — A double church on the Burg — a plain Romanesque lower chapel and a richly painted Gothic upper one, guarding a venerated relic said to hold a drop of Christ's blood, brought back from the Crusades. Small, atmospheric and central; the relic is shown daily.
• 9.Belgian chocolate — Belgium makes the best chocolate in the world, and Bruges is wall-to-wall with artisan chocolatiers — watch pralines hand-made in the window, taste your way round, and duck into the quirky Choco-Story museum for the how and why. Sweet, serious, and everywhere.
• 10.Belgian frites — The Belgians invented these and guard them fiercely — thick-cut potatoes fried twice till golden, served in a paper cone with a dollop of mayonnaise, from a frietkot on the Markt. Cheap, perfect, and the national dish; eat them hot, standing up, watching the square.