Bruges and West Flanders | Page 2

piled on the stalls or spread out on the rough stones wherever there
is a vacant space. Round the stalls, in the narrow spaces between them,
the people move about, talking, laughing, and bargaining. Their native
Flemish is the tongue they use amongst themselves; but many of them
speak what passes for French at Bruges, or even a few words of broken
English, if some unwary stranger from across the Channel is rash
enough to venture on doing business with these sharp-witted, plausible
folk.

At first sight this Market-Place, so famed in song, is a disappointment.
The north side is occupied by a row of seventeenth-century houses
turned into shops and third-rate cafés. On the east is a modern
post-office, dirty and badly ventilated, and some half-finished
Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once of
some note--the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden times,
the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their Court, used to
watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges was celebrated,
and in which Maximilian was imprisoned by the burghers in 1488; and
the Hôtel de Bouchoute, a narrow, square building of dark red brick,
with a gilded lion over the doorway. But the Cranenburg, once the
'most magnificent private residence in the Market-Place,' many years
ago lost every trace of its original splendour, and is now an unattractive
hostelry, the headquarters of a smoking club; while the Hôtel de
Bouchoute, turned into a clothier's shop, has little to distinguish it from
its commonplace neighbours. Nevertheless,
'In the Market-Place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown; Thrice
consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.'
It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first
belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least is certain,
that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient archives of the town
perished, destroyed the greater part of an old belfry, which some
suppose may have been erected in the ninth century. On two
subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the
present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former structure, was
damaged by fire; and now it stands on the south side of the
Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive building of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn, weather-beaten, and
majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been said, 'this Belfry has
watched over the city of Bruges. It has beheld her triumphs and her
failures, her glory and her shame, her prosperity and her gradual decay,
and, in spite of so many vicissitudes, it is still standing to bear witness
to the genius of our forefathers, to awaken memories of old times and
admiration for one of the most splendid monuments of civic
architecture which the Middle Ages has produced.'[*]

[Footnote *: Gilliat-Smith, The Story of Bruges, p. 169 (Dent and Co.,
London, 1901). Mr. Gilliat-Smith's book is a picturesque account of
Bruges in the Middle Ages. Of the English works relating to Bruges,
there is nothing better than Mr. Wilfrid Robinson's Bruges, an
Historical Sketch, a short and clear history, coming down to modern
times (Louis de Plancke, Bruges, 1899).]
In olden times watchmen were always on duty on the Belfry to give
warning if enemies approached or fire broke out in any part of the town,
a constant source of danger when most of the houses were built of
wood. Even in these more prosaic days the custom of keeping watch
and ward unceasingly is still maintained, and if there is a fire, the
alarum-bell clangs over the city. All day, from year's end to year's end,
the chimes ring every quarter of an hour; and all night, too, during the
wildest storms of winter, when the wind shrieks round the tower; and in
summer, when the old town lies slumbering in the moonlight.
[Illustration: BRUGES. A corner of the Market on the Grand' Place.]
From the top of the Belfry one looks down on what is practically a
mediæval city. The Market-Place seems to lose its modern aspect when
seen from above; and all round there is nothing visible but houses with
high-pointed gables and red roofs, intersected by canals, and streets so
narrow that they appear to be mere lanes. Above these rise, sometimes
from trees and gardens, churches, convents, venerable buildings, the
lofty spire of Notre Dame, the tower of St. Sauveur, the turrets of the
Gruthuise, the Hospital of St. John, famous for its paintings by
Memlinc, the Church of Ste. Elizabeth in the grove of the Béguinage,
the pinnacles of the Palais du Franc, the steep roof of the Hôtel de Ville,
the dome of the Couvent des Dames Anglaises, and beyond that to the
east the slender tower