About Bruges

Bruges (Dutch: Brugge) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country.

The historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. The city's total population is 117,073 of which around 20,000 live in the historic centre. The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of 616 km² and has a total of 255,844 inhabitants.

Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, it is sometimes referred to as "The Venice of the North".

Bruges has most of its medieval architecture intact. The historic centre of Bruges is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.

Many of its medieval buildings are notable, including the Church of Our Lady, whose brick spire — at 122m — makes it one of the world's highest brick towers/buildings. The sculpture Madonna and Child, which can be seen in the transept, is believed to be Michelangelo's only sculpture to have left Italy within his lifetime.

Bruges is also famous for its thirteenth-century belfry, housing a municipal carillon comprising 47 bells. The city still employs a full-time carillonneur, who gives free concerts on a regular basis.

Other famous buildings in Bruges include:

* The Beguinage
* The Basilica of the Holy Blood (Heilig-Bloedbasiliek).
* The modern Concertgebouw ("Concert Building")
* The Old St-John's Hospital
* The Saint-Salvator Cathedral
* The Groeningemuseum
* The City Hall on the Burg square
* The Provincial Court (Provinciaal Hof)
* The preserved old city gateways

Bruges also has a very fine collection of medieval and early modern art, including the world-famous collection of Flemish Primitives. Various masters, such as Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck, lived and worked in Bruges.

Historical Bruges

Origins

Very few traces of human activity date from the Pre-Roman Gaul era. The first fortifications were built after Julius Caesar's conquest of the Menapii in the first century BC, to protect the coastal area against pirates.

The Franks took over the whole region from the Gallo-Romans around the 4th century and administered it as the Pagus Flandrensis.

The Viking incursions of the ninth century prompted Baldwin I, Count of Flanders to reinforce the Roman fortifications; trade soon resumed with England and Scandinavia. It is at around this time that coins appeared for the first time bearing the name Bryggia. This name may stem from the Old Norse Bryggja, meaning "landing stage" or "port", and may have the same origin as Norway’s Bryggen.

Golden Age (12th to 15th century)

Bruges got its city charter on July 27, 1128 and built itself new walls and canals. Since about 1050, gradual silting had caused the city to lose its direct access to the sea. A storm in 1134, however, re-established this access, through the creation of a natural channel at the Zwin. The new sea arm stretched all the way to Damme, a city that became the commercial outpost for Bruges.

With the reawakening of town life in the twelfth century, a wool market, a woollens weaving industry, and the market for cloth all profited from the shelter of city walls, where surpluses could be safely accumulated under the patronage of the counts of Flanders.
Bruges was already included in the circuit of the Flemish cloth fairs at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The city's entrepreneurs reached out to make economic colonies of England and Scotland's wool-producing districts. English contacts brought Normandy grain and Gascon wines. Hanseatic ships filled the harbor, which had to be expanded beyond Damme to Sluys to accommodate the new cog-ships.
In 1277, the first merchant fleet from Genoa appeared in the port of Bruges, first of the merchant colony that made Bruges the main link to the trade of the Mediterranean.
This development opened not only the trade in spices from the Levant, but also advanced commercial and financial techniques and a flood of capital that soon took over the banking of Bruges. The Bourse opened in 1309 and developed into the most sophisticated money market of the Low Countries in the fourteenth century. By the time Venetian galleys first appeared, in 1314, they were latecomers.

Such wealth gave rise to social upheavals, which were for the most part harshly contained. In 1302, however, after the Bruges Matins (the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by the members of the local Flemish militia on 18 May 1302), the population joined forces with the Count of Flanders against the French, culminating in the victory at the Battle of the Golden Spurs, fought near Kortrijk on July 11. The statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, the leaders of the uprising, can still be seen on the Market square.

In the 15th century, Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy set up court in Bruges, as well as Brussels and Lille, attracting a number of artists, bankers, and other prominent personalities from all over Europe.

The new Flemish-school, oil-painting techniques gained world renown. The first book in English ever printed was published in Bruges by William Caxton. This is also the time when Edward IV and Richard III of England spent time in exile here. The population swelled to more than 40,000 inhabitants.

16th century until now

Starting around 1500, the Zwin channel, which had given the city its prosperity, also started silting. The city soon fell behind Antwerp as the economic flagship of the Low Countries.
During the 17th century, the lace industry took off and various efforts to bring back the glorious past were made. During the 1650s the city was the base for the court of Charles II of England and his court in exile. The maritime infrastructure was modernized, and new connections with the sea were built, but without much success.
Bruges became impoverished and gradually disappeared from the picture. The symbolist novelist George Rodenbach even made the sleepy city into a character in his novel Bruges-la-Morte meaning "Bruges-the-dead", which was adapted into Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera, 'Die tote Stadt (The Dead City).
In the last half of the 19th century Bruges became one of the world's first tourist destinations attracting wealthy British and French tourists. Only in the second half of the twentieth century has the city started to reclaim some of its past glory.
The port of Zeebrugge was built in 1907. The Germans used it for their U-boats in World War I. It was greatly expanded in the 1970s and early 1980s and has become one of Europe's most important and modern ports.

International tourism has boomed and new efforts have resulted in Bruges being designated 'European Capital of Culture' in 2002.

Chocolat, waffles and beer

Belgian Chocolate

Belgium chocolate has pure cocoa flavor because no vegetable shortening is used.

The origin and orientation of the cacao plantation as well as the de-acidification and roasting of the beans are all key factors in finding the right flavor. Most tourists know that Belgium is a chocolate paradise. Belgium produces 172,000 tons of chocolate per year in over 2,130 chocolate shops.

Belgians have been making the world's finest chocolate for well over a century and locals simply regard good chocolate as an everyday part of like. Every Belgian City of any size has divine chocolate shops.

You can buy 100-200 gram gourmet bars of chocolate in grocery stores for about €1 each. Good Belgian brands are Côte-d'Or and Jacques.

Belgian chocolate traditionally mixes cocoa paste, sugar and cocoa butter in varying proportions. Dark chocolate uses the most cocoa, milk chocolate mixes n milk, and white chocolate is made be extracting only the butter from the cocoa. Pure cocoa butter is the fundamental ingredient.

Pralines, filled chocolates, are the most popular belgian chocolates. Prices match quality and reputation — anywhere between €30 and €58 per kilogram. In better establishments you will paying for the white gloves they wear to hand pick each praline.

The Belgian chocolate goes back centuries. Belgium's first chocolate shop, Neuhaus, opened in Brussels in 1857 and still exists. Neuhaus' grandson is credited with inventing the praline — in 1912 he filled an empty chocolate shell with sweet substances , and so a Belgian institution was born.

Belgian Beer

In Belgium Beer is the most varied, numerous and high-quality in the world.

Let me speak immediately about the main Belgium beer rules. Every beer has its own glass. Thou shall drink another beer, if the right glass is not available! Antwerpians and Belgians will always follow this rule.

Don’t act surprised if you see that somebody refuse a beer in the wrong glass. That’s completely normal and the bar tender will apologetically inform you that the right glass is not available. He will not try to convince the customer that the beer tastes the same in anther glass. It doesn’t!

Belgian Waffles

Belgian waffles were created for the 1964 World's Fair in NY. There, Fairgoers were treated to a new creation: the "Bel-Gem Waffle" — a combination of waffle, strawberries and whipped cream.
The inventor of the Belgian waffle was Maurice Vermersch and his wife:
Vermersch started making waffles from a recipe of his wife's when living in Belgium before the outbreak of World War II. After serving in the war, he started two restaurants in Belgium before making his World's Fair debut at the Brussels fair in 1960. Business went so well in Brussels that Vermersch and four other families decided to head to New York for the 1964 World's Fair. And when they arrived in Queens, the name of their product was changed from the Brussel Waffle to the Belgian Waffle. The name Belgian waffle was created in New York.