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Few medieval cities have survived as completely as Bruges. While much of northern Europe was reshaped by industrialisation and two world wars, this West Flemish city was largely bypassed by both, leaving behind a canal-threaded centre of gabled guild houses, whitewashed almshouses, and cobbled squares that have changed remarkably little since the fifteenth century. That preservation was partly accident and partly economic stagnation: when the River Zwin silted up and Antwerp eclipsed Bruges as the commercial capital of the Low Countries, the city simply froze. What felt like decline for centuries reads now as extraordinary good fortune.

The historic core, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000, is compact enough to cover on foot in a day but rewards far longer attention. The Markt, with its soaring thirteenth-century Belfort, is the natural orientation point, though the quieter Burg square just to the east carries an even denser layer of civic history. South of the Markt, the Dijver canal runs past a sequence of museums that together form one of the richest concentrations of Flemish art anywhere. The Groeninge Museum holds the definitive collection of Flemish Primitive painting, including Jan van Eyck and Hans Memling, artists who worked here when Bruges was among the wealthiest cities in the world. The Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekerk, whose brick tower is the tallest in Belgium, contains Michelangelo's Madonna and Child, one of the few works by the sculptor to leave Italy during his lifetime.