Things to do in Bruges

Landmark · Centre

The market square and its leaning thirteenth-century tower, inscribed by UNESCO as part of the Belfries of Belgium and France.

Local tip: It is 366 steps and the ticket caps numbers, so book a slot rather than queueing in the passage. Better still, be on the Markt at seven in the morning: the carillon is audible, the square is empty, and the terraces that charge tourist prices by ten have not opened.

Landmark · Centre, behind the Markt

The old administrative square — Gothic town hall, Renaissance registry, and a chapel holding a relic paraded through the city every Ascension Day.

Local tip: The Heilig Bloedprocessie on Ascension Day is not a re-enactment for visitors; it has run for centuries and much of the city takes part. If you are here in May, that is the day to be in town. The upper chapel is free to enter and almost always quiet.

Nature · South of the centre

A walled courtyard of white houses under poplars, part of the UNESCO Flemish Béguinages, opening onto the lake at the city's southern edge.

Local tip: Benedictine sisters live here, so it closes in the evening and silence is asked for rather than suggested. Go in late March when the courtyard fills with daffodils, and walk on round the Minnewater and up the Begijnenvest — a green rampart walk most visitors never find.

Culture · Dijver and Mariastraat

Two small museums holding Jan van Eyck, Hans Memling and the Flemish Primitives — painted here, for patrons here.

Local tip: The Groeninge is deliberately small and you can see it properly in ninety minutes, which is more than can be said for most European collections of this quality. Sint-Janshospitaal keeps the Memlings in the building they were painted for, alongside a preserved apothecary — that combination is the reason to go.

Neighborhood · North-east of the centre

The quiet quarter inside the ring canal where Bruggelingen actually live — brick almshouses, a Jerusalem chapel built by a merchant family, and canal frontage with nobody on it.

Local tip: Walk out along the Langerei towards the Dampoort and you leave the visitors behind within four minutes. The godshuizen — tiny whitewashed almshouse courtyards scattered through this quarter — are still lived in and mostly unmarked; you find them by pushing on a gate that turns out to be open.

Food · Walplein, centre

A working family brewery in the middle of a World Heritage site, connected to its bottling plant by 3.3 kilometres of underground beer pipe.

Local tip: The pipeline opened in September 2016 and was funded partly by crowdfunding — a few hundred thousand euros raised from people who took beer as their return. It moves 4,000 litres an hour under the medieval streets and exists solely so tankers stop grinding through the centre. The rooftop of the brewery tour is one of the best views in Bruges and almost nobody comes for that.