In The House Of The Lady Superior Is
Preserved The Small, But Very Splendid, Memorial Brass Of A Former
Inmate, Who Died At About The Middle Of The Fifteenth Century.
Wander where you will in the ancient streets of Bruges, and you
will not fail to discover everywhere some delightful relic of
antiquity, or to stumble at every street corner on some new and
charming combination of old houses, with their characteristic
crow-stepped, or corbie, gables.
New houses, I suppose, there must
really be by scores; but these, being built with inherent good
taste (whether unconscious or conscious I do not know) in the
traditional style of local building, and with brick that from the
first is mellow in tint and harmonizes with its setting,
assimilate at once with their neighbours to right and left, and
fail to offend the eye by any patchy appearance or crudeness.
Hardly a single street in Bruges is thus without old-world charm;
but the architectural heart of the city must be sought in its two
market-places, called respectively the Grande Place and the Place
du Bourg. In the former are the brick Halles, with their famous
belfry towering above the structure below it, with true Belgian
disregard for proportion in height. It looks, indeed, like tower
piled on tower, till one is almost afraid lest the final octagon
should be going to topple over! In the Place du Bourg is a less
aspiring group, consisting of the Hotel de Ville, the Chapelle du
Saint Sang, the Maison de l'Ancien Greffe, and the Palais de
Justice - all very Flemish in character, and all, in combination,
elaborately picturesque.
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