Bruges was rich before it was pretty. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was one of the great trading ports of northern Europe, a place where merchants from Italy, Spain, the Hanseatic towns and England bought wool, cloth, spices and silver, and where the first stock-exchange-like dealings took place in a square named after a family called Van der Beurse. Then the channel to the sea silted up, trade moved to Antwerp, and the city went into a long sleep that preserved its medieval centre almost intact. A Belgian writer called it the dead city, and the label stuck for a century.
What survives is a maze of canals, brick gables, humped bridges and cobbled lanes. The Belfry rises over the market square at about eighty-three metres, and climbing its three hundred and sixty-six steps rewards you with a view across red roofs to the polder country beyond. The Basilica of the Holy Blood holds a relic said to have been brought back from the Crusades, and in the Church of Our Lady stands a marble Madonna and Child by Michelangelo, one of the few of his works to leave Italy in his lifetime. The Begijnhof, a peaceful court of whitewashed houses built for lay sisters, is quiet in the early morning, with daffodils in spring.
Eating and drinking are serious business. Frites are served in paper cones with mayonnaise, beer comes in glasses designed for each brand, and chocolate shops line half the streets. Mussels and chips are the classic dish, and carbonnade, a beef stew with beer, is the winter comfort.
For a rider the centre is a pleasure to leave on foot and a trial to cross by bike. Cobbles are slick when wet, much of the old town is closed to cars, and parking is controlled, so leave the bike at a car park near the ring road. Beyond the walls the roads are flat, straight and often lined with poplars, running toward the coast and the dunes. Fuel stations are easy to find on the ring and the main roads. Visit on a weekday in spring or autumn, and go early to avoid the coach tours.