Bruges

Medieval canal city in West Flanders, Belgium; see Belgium (Literary).

At a glance

Source	Author	Role	In one line
Neither Here Nor There	Bill Bryson	subject	”So deeply, endlessly gorgeous”: a city saved by five centuries of being forgotten.

Sub-places

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Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson (1991)

Source: Readwise highlight

Everything about Bruges was perfect—its cobbled streets, bottle-green canals, steep-roofed medieval houses, market squares, slumbering parks, everything. No city has been better favored by decline.

• Role: subject
• In the book: A day trip in chapter 6. Bryson walks “for a day with my mouth open,” looks into the Groeninge Museum and the Béguinage with its daffodil lawns, and tries every street inside the ring canal. He explains how the silting of the Zwyn left Bruges a backwater for five hundred years. A bore in a bar on St. Jakobstraat complains about tourists, and Bryson leaves early the next morning to keep his illusions intact.
• Why it matters: Bruges is the positive proof of the argument he made in Brussels: neglect preserved what development destroyed. He sets it against Antwerp, which he was told was once even lovelier until developers “pulled down everything.”