Explorer Bruges

The Markt is the central square of Bruges, used for markets since the 10th century. The 13th-century Belfry and its market halls stand on the south side, gabled guild houses and the neo-Gothic Provincial Court line the others, and a statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck stands in the middle.

The Burg is a square in Bruges on the site of the fortress of the early Counts of Flanders. Around it stand the Gothic City Hall, begun in 1376, the Basilica of the Holy Blood, the classicist palace of the Liberty of Bruges and the outline of the former St. Donatian's Cathedral, demolished after 1799.

The Basilica of the Holy Blood on the Burg in Bruges is a double chapel built from 1134 as the private chapel of the Counts of Flanders. The Romanesque lower chapel of St Basil survives almost unchanged, while the upper chapel, rebuilt in Gothic style and redecorated in the 19th century, keeps the relic of the Holy Blood; a small museum and treasury adjoin it.

St. Salvator's Cathedral is the cathedral of Bruges, a Gothic brick church built from 1250 on the site of a parish church in use since the 10th century, and a cathedral only since 1834. After a fire in 1839 the English architect Robert Chantrell gave its west tower a neo-Romanesque top; inside are a late-Gothic choir stall, 18th-century tapestries and a treasury.

The beguinage of Bruges was founded around 1244 by Margaret of Constantinople as a community of religious laywomen. About thirty white-painted houses from the 16th to 18th centuries and a Gothic church stand around a tree-shaded lawn; since 1927 Benedictine nuns have lived here instead of beguines.