Huidenvettersplein

The name translates as "Tanners' Square," and it tells you exactly what happened here for centuries. This small square near the Dijver canal was the working heart of Bruges' leather industry, where animal hides were scraped, treated, and cured. The process was messy, smelly, and essential — leather was used for everything from shoes to bookbindings to armour, and the tanners who worked here were among the city's most important craftspeople, even if nobody wanted to live downwind of them.

The tanners needed running water to process their hides, which is why they set up next to the canal. The old fish market — a stone-columned arcade called the Vismarkt — sits just to the north, where fresh fish from the North Sea was sold every morning. Between the tanners and the fishmongers, this corner of medieval Bruges was not the most fragrant neighbourhood. Today, of course, the smells are exclusively of Belgian waffles and moules-frites, served at the restaurant terraces that now fill the square.

The square is intimate — barely thirty metres across — and feels like a secret even though it sits a stone's throw from the Rozenhoedkaai. A column at the centre supports two bronze lions, the heraldic symbols of Flanders, added in the 19th century. The surrounding buildings are a mix of genuine medieval structures and later reconstructions, their ground floors converted into restaurants with outdoor seating that spills across the cobblestones in summer.

Huidenvettersplein is one of those Bruges squares that works best when you stop trying to photograph it and simply sit down with a beer. The view to the canal and the Belfry tower in the background is exactly the kind of scene that makes people book return flights before they have left.