Crowds tend to overwhelm
Bruges nowadays - its reputation as a perfectly preserved medieval city has made it the most popular tourist destination in Belgium - but you'd be mad to come to
Flanders.
With an MSC
Northern Europe & cruises from UK cruise and miss it: Bruges' museums hold some of the
country's finest collections of Flemish art, and its intimate, winding streets, woven around a skein of
narrow canals and lined with gorgeous
ancient buildings, live up to even the most inflated tourist hype.
When you step ashore from your
MSC cruise, the obvious start to an exploration of the city is the two principal squares: the
Markt, overlooked by the mighty belfry, and the
Burg, flanked by the city's most impressive architectural ensemble. Almost within shouting distance are the three main museums, among which the
Groeninge offers a wonderful sample of early Flemish art.
Another short hop brings you to
St-Janshospitaal and the important paintings of the fifteenth-century artist
Hans Memling, as well as Bruges' most impressive churches, the
Onze Lieve Vrouwekerk and
St-Salvatorskathedraal. Further
afield, the gentle canals and maze-like cobbled streets of eastern Bruges - stretching out from Jan van Eyckplein - are extraordinarily pretty.
The most characteristic architectural feature is the crow-step gable, popular from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century and revived by the restorers of the 1880s, but there are also expansive Georgian-style mansions and humble, homely cottages.
Time and again the eye is surprised by the sober and subtle variety of the cityscape, featuring everything from intimate arched doorways and bendy tiled roofs to wonky chimneys and a bevy of discreet shrines and miniature statues.
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