Bruges (Brugge) Venice of the North

Bruges (Dutch: Brugge) is the capital and largest city of the province of West Flanders in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located in the northwest of the country.The historic city centre is a prominent World Heritage Site of UNESCO. The city’s total population is 117,073 (1 January 2008), of which around 20,000 live in the historic centre.

Burg by night

Mariastraat

Wollestraat

Along with a few other canal-based northern cities, such as Amsterdam, it is sometimes referred to as “The Venice of the North”.

Piazza San Marco at dawn, Venice

“Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house where the human step circulates as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most adorned corner”.
Henry James, the Aspern Papers

Piazza San Marco at dawn