Markt Square

This is where Bruges puts on its best medieval face, and it has been doing so for over a thousand years. The Markt has served as the city's central marketplace since at least 958, when Count Arnulf I granted the right to hold a weekly market here. For centuries, this was the commercial engine of one of Europe's wealthiest cities — a place where Flemish cloth was traded, fortunes were made, and political power was displayed with architectural swagger.

At the centre stands a bronze statue of Jan Breydel and Pieter de Coninck, erected in 1887 by sculptor Paul De Vigne. These two men — a butcher and a weaver — are celebrated as heroes of the 1302 Bruges Matins, when Flemish citizens rose up against their French occupiers. The revolt led to the Battle of the Golden Spurs on July 11 of that year, where an army of Flemish craftsmen and farmers defeated the flower of French knighthood near Kortrijk. That date is now the official holiday of Flanders. Whether Breydel and de Coninck played quite the heroic roles the statue suggests is debatable — the historical record is thin — but the myth has stuck.

The square is dominated by the neo-Gothic Provinciaal Hof on the eastern side, built between 1887 and 1920 on the site of the old Waterhalle, a medieval covered port where boats once unloaded goods directly into the centre of town. The Waterhalle was demolished in 1787 after the waterways silted up, and the neoclassical replacement burned down in 1878. What you see now is essentially a Victorian fantasy of what a medieval government building should look like, clad in 68,000 terracotta tiles.

The colourful guild houses lining the square may look ancient, but most facades are 19th-century reconstructions. Still, when the morning light hits the stepped gables and the carillon rings from the Belfry, it is easy to forget that some of this is restoration rather than original. The Markt sells the illusion of the Middle Ages so convincingly that the illusion becomes its own kind of truth.