Why Bruges is the most beautiful city in Europe?

Bruges is a small Belgian city, which boasts the title, “The Venice of the North”. Ever since I started travelling and asking people around for recommendations on places to travel, Bruges has been mentioned without fail. It was really difficult for me to understand “Why”, as Bruges is neither a capital city nor well known in the East where I come from; all this until I visited Bruges my self.

Bruges had always been on my “To Do” list since then. The journey to Bruges hasn’t been easy. I had been to all neighboring cities around Bruges, Ghent, Brussels and Antwerp, before finally making to this city. Partly because most of the friends I generally travel with had been to it, or they wanted to save it for their honeymoon.

Bruges has a medieval charm. It’s as if the time has stopped for the city in a particular moment. There is an interesting story behind this… Bruges was a city that grew out of a barren land. Being a shore town, Bruges had salty soil; not fit for growing crops. The inhabitants started textile work and reared sheep. As textile became the primary product, the city flourished and became a prominent cloth and wool market; The traders became prosperous and the houses became magnificent. Bruges in its brightest era, was the richest city in western Europe. However the city fell victim to its own prosperity.

Once the city became rich, the residents started switching to farming, aided with the abundance of investments and advancements in techniques. However farming was not as profitable as textile and merchandise. City soon lost its title to its neighbor and competing city Antwerp. The city never had the money to refurbish its buildings after that, let alone rebuilt them. This is the main reason why the city seems to be stuck in time. The buildings are from the medieval era which have never seen large scale renovations. Poverty however came as a blessing in disguise. The medieval charm attracted thousands of tourists each day ever since the nineteenth century. The city became such a mark of beauty that in both world war I and world war II, the city was spared.

The historic city is now a UNESCO world heritage, and holds a population of around 20000 most of whom live off the tourists the it attracts. The city still boasts of a canal system like the other economic powerhouses of by-gone era; namely Venice and Amsterdam.

With the passage of time, as the surroundings modernize, the city will become even more beautiful if it sticks to its pasts. Bruges comes alive and tells us a story. A story which hasn’t seen an end even with rapid urbanization and industrialization.

Bruges has the air of an immortal town. The high towers, the trees along the canals withdraw, absorb by the same muslin: impenetrable fog with not a single rift. Even the carillon seems to have to escape, to force its way out of a prison yard filled with cotton wool to be free in the air, to reach the gables over which, every quarter of an hour, the bells poured, like falling leaves, a melancholy autumn of music.

The Fairy tale Town of Bruges is most certainly Belgium’s crown jewel. It has everything a traveler would want: Belgian waffles and fries sold every 10 steps (though not together!), oh-so-much chocolate, beautiful buildings, old Gothic-style halls and belfries, canals, cobblestones, fantastic beer, not-s0-terrible prices (in comparison to its neighbors, the UK and France!), and cheap, easy connections to other Belgian cities such as Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. If you’ve seen In Bruges, you’ll see the foreigners’ “dislike” of Belgium in general and Bruges in particular, but at the same time, the boss (minus the swearing) hits the nail on the head while bewilderingly responding to his employee’s response that “Bruges isn’t his ‘thing’: “It’s a fairy tale town, isn’t it? How can a fairy tale town not be somebody’s thing? How can all those canals and bridges and cobbled streets and those churches, all that beautiful fairy tale stuff, how can that not be somebody’s thing, eh? How can swans not be somebody’s thing, eh? How can that be??!” How indeed?