The Tonlieu is now fitted up as the Municipal Library. (Open daily, free, 10 to 1, and 3 to 5, Saturday and Sunday excepted.) It contains illuminated manuscripts and examples of editions printed by Colard Mansion. All round the Place are other picturesque mediæval or Renaissance houses.
The little street to the R. (diagonally) of the Tonlieu leads on to the Marché du Mercedi, now called Place de Memling, embellished by a statue of the great painter. Cross the Place diagonally to the Quai des Espagnoles (Madonna and Child in front of you) and continue along the quay, to the L., to the first bridge; there cross and go along the picturesque Quai des Augustins to the Rue Flamande. (Quaint little window to the left, as you cross the bridge.) Follow the Rue Flamande as far as the Theatre, just before reaching which you pass, right, a handsome mediæval stone mansion, (formerly the Guild of the Genoese Merchants,) with a relief over the door, representing St. George killing the Dragon, and the Princess Cleodolind looking on. At the Theatre, turn to the R., following the tram-line, and making your way back to the Grand’ Place by the Rue des Tonneliers.
(2) As early as 1362, Bruges acquired its existing size, and was surrounded by =ramparts=, which still in part remain. A continuous canal runs round these ramparts, and beyond it again lies an outer moat. Most of the =old gates= have unhappily been destroyed, but four still exist. These may be made the objects of interesting rambles.
Go from your hotel, or from the Grand’ Place, by the Rue Flamande, as far as the Rue de l’Académie. Turn along this to the R., into the Place Jan van Eyck, noting as you pass the Bear of Bruges at the corner of the building of the old Academy. Follow the quay straight on till you reach a second canal, near the corner of which, by the Rue des Carmes, is an interesting shop with good beaten brasswork. Take the long squalid Rue des Carmes to the right, past the ugly convent of the English Ladies, with its domed church in the most painful taste of the later Renaissance (1736). The mediæval brick building on your right, at the end of the street, is the late Gothic =Guild-house of the Archers of St. Sebastian=. Its slender octagonal tower has a certain picturesqueness. (St. Sebastian was of course the patron of archery.) Charles II. of England (see under the Grand’ Place) was a member of this society during his exile: his bust is preserved here. So also was the Emperor Maximilian. Continue to the =ramparts=, and mount the first hill, crowned by a windmill,—a scene of a type familiar to us in many later Dutch and Flemish pictures. A picturesque view of Bruges is obtained from this point: the octagonal Belfry, the square tower of St. Sauveur, (the Cathedral), the tapering brick spire of Notre-Dame, with its projecting gallery and the steeple of the new church of the Madeleine are all conspicuous in views from this side. Follow the ramparts to the R., to the picturesque =Porte de Ste. Croix=, and on past the barracks and the little garden to the Quai des Dominicains, returning by the Park and the Place du Bourg or the Dyver.