Markt, Burg and the merchant canals

Markt

Bruges' market square, the 83-metre Belfort and its 366 steps.

You're standing on the Markt with the Belfort in front of you. The tower is 83 metres of brick and stone, raised in stages between the 13th and 15th centuries, and it is listed as UNESCO World Heritage with the other belfries of Flanders. Climbing it takes 366 steps, up a single spiral staircase that people use in both directions. Partway up you pass the treasury, where Bruges kept its charters, its city seal and its cash in the Middle Ages.

One floor higher is the drum that turns the carillon, and above that the small room where the carillonneur's keyboard waits. Tickets cost 16 euros at weekends, on public holidays and right through the summer, and 15 euros on winter weekdays between 3 November and 31 March. The tower fills up, so book a timed slot online before you come; last entry is an hour before closing. If the queue is long, the square itself deserves ten minutes.

This is where the city has always gathered.

Rozenhoedkaai

The canal bend on the postcards, once the city's salt quay.

You came down the Wollestraat for this, and here it is. The view runs along the Reie, the river that turned Bruges into a port, and since the late Middle Ages the Reie splits just here into two arms, both of them canalized. One of them, the Kraanrei, was later covered over and now runs beneath the streets behind you. For centuries this quay was called the Zoutdijk, the salt quay, and a document from 1390 calls it the salt stairs by the Eechoutte, where boats were loaded.

Salt mattered more than it sounds: it preserved the herring and the butter the city sold abroad. The pretty name came later, in the 18th century, when stalls on the quay sold rozenkransen, rosaries, to travellers passing through. The quay's position did the work. Between the fish market, the tanners' square and the Pandreitje, a good part of what changed hands in this corner of the city passed in front of you.

Since 2018 the quay, the fish market and the tanners' square have been protected as a single city view.

Vismarkt

Calloigne's colonnade of 1820, the oldest fish hall in Belgium.

Fish was a luxury here. North Sea fish was sold up on the Markt, and it was the rich who bought it. In the 18th century the fishmongers were banished from the Markt. The smell was the complaint. In 1745 they were moved to this square, then called the Braamberg, a patch of ground between the Groene Rei and the Braambergstraat, and for another 75 years they sold in the open air, rain or not.

In 1820 the city architect Jean-Robert Calloigne gave them the colonnade you see, finished the following year: 126 Tuscan columns with no bases, set in a double row around a rectangular courtyard, with one raised gateway breaking the run of columns. It's the oldest surviving fish hall in Belgium, and the only public building Bruges put up during the Dutch period. Wooden sales tables were replaced by bluestone benches in 1852. In the courtyard a pump sits under a bluestone obelisk. Stalls still sell day-fresh fish, but only from Wednesday to Saturday morning.