Three days in Bruges: the day trippers leave at five, and the town is yours

Two nights inside the ring canal, everything on foot, with the belfry and the Memlings taken in the mornings and the evenings kept for the streets.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Bruges
Places
7 across 3 days
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Bruges gets an enormous number of visitors and almost all of them come for the day. Coaches unload at nine, the Markt is shoulder to shoulder by eleven, and by six in the evening the same square is nearly empty and lit by the shopfronts. Staying two nights buys you the second version, which is the one worth coming for.

The reason for the crowds is real enough. This was the richest city in northern Europe in the 14th century, the port where the Hanseatic League met Italian banking, and then the sea silted up and the money went to Antwerp. Nobody had the funds to knock the place down and rebuild it, so it stayed. What you walk through is a medieval trading city preserved by four hundred years of poverty.

The old town fits inside an egg-shaped ring canal about two kilometres across, so nothing here needs transport. Three days means an afternoon on the two squares, a full day with the greatest paintings Flanders produced, and a last morning that ends at the station on foot.

Highlights

  • The belfry at opening, before the queue for the 366 steps reaches the courtyard
  • Van Eyck and Memling in two small museums five minutes apart, hung where they were painted
  • Michelangelo's Madonna, one of very few of his sculptures that left Italy in his lifetime
  • A working brewery in the middle of the old town that pipes its beer under the streets
  • The lanes north of the Markt at nine in the evening, when the coaches have gone

Where to stay

Bruges, two nights inside the ring

Sleep inside the ring canal. Rates are higher than in a Belgian city of this size ought to be, and the trade is that you can walk out of your door at nine in the evening into an empty medieval street, which is what nobody who leaves at five gets to do.

The quarters north and east of the Markt, around Sint-Gillis and Sint-Anna, are residential, quiet and five to ten minutes from everything below. The streets immediately on the Markt are loud until late and priced for the view.

Day by day

Day 1 in Bruges

The Markt, the belfry and the Burg

Arrive, drop the bags and walk in. The two squares at the heart of Bruges sit a hundred metres apart and could not be less alike: one is a broad market place lined with stepped gables and a tower over it, the other a small closed courtyard of church, town hall and law court.

If you get in early enough, climb the belfry before the queue forms. If you get in late, skip the climb today and take the square in the evening instead, when the gables are lit and there is room to stand in it.

  1. 15:00

    Grote Markt

    Visit

    The market square, a full hectare of it, ringed with stepped gables and dominated by the 83 metre belfry on its south side. The climb is 366 narrow steps with a one-way system and a limit on numbers, so there is often a wait; the carillon of 47 bells goes off above your head on the way up. The horses and carriages start from here.

  2. 16:45

    Basilica of the Holy Blood (Heilige Bloed Basiliek)

    Religious

    Two churches stacked on the Burg square: a dark Romanesque lower chapel from the 12th century, and a bright Gothic upper one holding a rock crystal vial said to contain the blood of Christ, brought back from the Holy Land after the Second Crusade. The relic is brought out for veneration daily, and paraded through the city every Ascension Day.

  3. 18:00

    De Garre

    Landmark

    Down an alley barely wide enough for two people, and easy to walk past. About a hundred beers, a house tripel at eleven per cent served with a cube of cheese, and a two drink limit per person that keeps the tables turning over. Small, warm and usually full.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner off the square

    Eat

    The restaurants directly on the Markt charge for the address. Walk two streets in any direction for the same mussels, waterzooi or stew cooked in brown beer at two thirds of the price, and book at weekends.

With more time: With an hour spare, the Jerusalem church out in the eastern quarter is the strangest building in Bruges: an octagonal tower raised by a family of Genoese merchants who had been to the Holy Land, a black marble tomb inside and a lace museum next door where the craft is still taught.

Day 2 in Bruges

Van Eyck, Memling and Michelangelo

Three of the best hours of art in Belgium sit within five minutes of each other below the Markt, and the collections are small enough to see properly rather than survive. Go at opening; the Memling museum in particular is a handful of rooms and fills quickly.

This is the Flemish Primitives on their own ground: painters working for the merchants and bankers who lived in these streets, using an oil technique that let them paint fur, brass and skin more exactly than anyone had before. Then a Renaissance marble that has no business being here at all.

  1. 09:30

    Groeninge Museum

    Culture

    Six centuries of painting in a dozen rooms, and the reason to come is the 15th century: Jan van Eyck's Madonna with Canon van der Paele, Hugo van der Goes, Gerard David, and a Bosch Last Judgement that rewards standing close. Small enough to do properly in ninety minutes.

  2. 11:30

    The Hospital of St John

    Culture

    A medieval hospital that treated the sick for eight centuries, with its wards, its pharmacy and six paintings by Hans Memling still in the building they were made for. The Saint Ursula reliquary, a miniature Gothic church painted on all sides, is the piece people come back to look at twice.

  3. 13:00

    Lunch on the south side

    Eat

    The streets between the hospital and the Church of Our Lady have quiet cafes doing soup, bread and a croquette that will not slow the afternoon down.

  4. 14:15

    Onze Lieve Vrouwkerk

    Religious

    A brick tower of 115 metres, visible from every approach to the city, over a church holding two Burgundian tombs (Charles the Bold and his daughter Mary) and a Michelangelo Madonna and Child in white marble, bought by a Bruges merchant and shipped north while the artist was still alive. There is a charge for the museum end where the sculpture and the tombs are.

With more time: The afternoon that is left is best spent on the ramparts. Four of the medieval city gates survive on the eastern and southern arc, along with a windmill or two, and the path between them is flat, green and almost entirely free of other visitors.

Day 3 in Bruges

A brewery, the beguinage and the walk to the train

The last morning runs south, which is the direction of the station, so nothing here is a detour. Check the bags at your hotel or at the station and walk it.

The brewery first, because the tours start on the hour and sell out in summer, then twenty minutes on foot through the quietest corner of the city to a walled courtyard of white houses, and out the other side to the platform.

  1. 10:30

    Brewery De Halve Maan

    Culture

    The last brewery still making beer inside the city walls, family run since 1856. The tour climbs through the old brewhouse to a rooftop with the best view in Bruges and finishes with a glass. The clever part is underground: rather than trucking beer out through medieval streets, they laid a three kilometre pipeline to the bottling plant outside town.

  2. 12:30

    The Beguinage (Begijnhof)

    Religious

    A walled courtyard of whitewashed houses under plane trees, founded in the 13th century for lay religious women who wanted neither marriage nor a convent. Benedictine nuns live here now and it is kept quiet, so groups are discouraged and voices drop at the gate. In March the lawn under the trees fills with daffodils.

  3. 13:30

    Chocolate, then the train

    Note

    Buy from a shop that makes its own rather than from the station kiosk, then follow the Minnewater and the park south. It is ten minutes from the beguinage gate to the platform.

With more time: If your train is not until the afternoon, the chocolate museum near the Markt fills an hour and includes rather more tasting than a museum ticket normally does, and the beer wall behind the old mayor's house lines up every Belgian brand in one place before you decide what to take home.

Before you go

Getting in and getting around

Trains from Brussels take about an hour and run twice an hour; from Brussels Airport it is around an hour and a half with one change at a Brussels station. Ghent is under half an hour away, Antwerp about an hour and a quarter. There is an airport at Ostend that Bruges shares, but it handles holiday charters rather than scheduled flights, so almost everybody arrives by rail.

Bruges station sits at the southern edge of the old town, a twenty minute walk from the Markt through the beguinage and the park, which is a pleasant arrival and a better departure. Buses run the same route if you are carrying anything heavy.

Inside the ring canal you walk. The centre is small, the cobbles are unkind to wheeled suitcases and thin shoes, and the only public transport is the bus. Bikes are easy to rent and locals use them, though the cobbles make for a rattling ride.

Beating the day trippers

The crowd has a timetable. It arrives between nine and ten, concentrates on the Markt, the Burg and the canal between them, and is gone by six. Anything ticketed and small, which here means the belfry, the Basilica of the Holy Blood and the Memling museum, is best done in the first hour of opening or the last hour of the afternoon.

Everything more than three streets from the Markt is quiet at any hour. The east side around Sint-Anna, the north around the old Hanseatic quarter and the whole ring of ramparts see a fraction of the traffic and are no less handsome.

Beer, chocolate and lace

Bruges is where a lot of people have their first serious Belgian beer, and the range is the problem rather than the quality. A good cafe will have several hundred bottles and a staff member who will narrow it down if you say whether you want sour, sweet, dark or strong. The local abbey-style beers run to eight or eleven per cent, so read the label before ordering a second.

Chocolate shops outnumber every other kind of shop in the centre and vary enormously. The ones that make what they sell on the premises are worth the extra euro or two; the ones with a coach parked outside are not.

Handmade lace is still made here and most of what is sold as Bruges lace is not. If you want the real thing, buy it where you can watch it being made, and expect to pay accordingly.

When to go

May, June and September are the sweet spot: long light, working canals, and a crowd that thins after the last coach. July and August are heavy all day. December brings a Christmas market and an ice rink on the Markt and, unusually for this city, more visitors after dark than during it.

Rain arrives in every season and the museums are the plan when it does. Most of them close on Monday, so if your trip includes one, put the walking and the squares on that day.

The thing that stays with people is not usually on the list. A canal with no boat on it, a bell over the rooftops at some odd hour, a bar with a hundred bottles and no music, the walk back to a hotel at eleven with nobody else in the street.

Bruges also does something few places manage: it is small enough to finish. In three days you can genuinely say you have seen it, which leaves the rest of Flanders (Ghent, Antwerp, the coast, the battlefields to the south) for a trip where Bruges is not the point but the start.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is Bruges worth more than a day trip?
That is the whole argument for going. A day trip gets you the Markt at its most crowded and nothing else. Two nights get you the museums without a queue, the ramparts, and the town in the evening when the streets belong to the people who live in them.
Do I need to book the belfry?
Tickets are timed and numbers on the stairs are capped, so in summer book online for the first slot of the day. Anyone with a fear of enclosed spaces should know that the 366 steps get narrow and steep near the top and there is no way to turn back once you are in the flow.
Should I take a canal boat?
Yes, and take it early. The boats run from five landings, last about half an hour, and show you the backs of houses you cannot otherwise see. They do not run in January and February, and the queues in the middle of the day are longer than the trip.
Can I use Bruges as a base for Flanders?
Comfortably. Ghent is 25 minutes by train and Antwerp about an hour and a quarter, both several times an hour, and Ypres is around an hour and a half to the south. If you are choosing one base for a week in Flanders, though, Ghent is more central and cheaper to sleep in.
How much walking is this?
About four or five kilometres a day, all of it flat and most of it on cobbles. Wear something with a sole. The only climb is the belfry, and that is optional.

Places and coordinates are drawn from Wikivoyage, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0: Bruges.