Private guided Tour to Bruges with roundtrip transportation from Paris (1-7)

Overview

A private day to Bruges for a party of up to seven, collected from your Paris address, with a guided walk through the world heritage centre, a canal cruise in the summer months and free time in the afternoon.

What to expect

• Collection at your address in Paris and the drive north.
• The guided walk: the market square, the belfry over the old halls, the Béguinage.
• The canal cruise, between April and October.
• Free time for lunch, a museum, a tasting or the shops.
• Departure from Bruges around half past four, back in Paris near nine.

There is one Michelangelo outside Italy that he sold himself

In the Church of Our Lady, a few streets from the market square, stands a marble Madonna and Child carved in Florence at the very start of the sixteenth century, while the same sculptor was working on the David.

Every other statue he made stayed in Italy in his lifetime. This one did not, because two Bruges cloth merchants had the money to buy it and the confidence to want it, and they gave it to their parish church. That single fact tells you what this city was: a trading town rich enough to outbid Italy for a Michelangelo, and provincial enough to put it in a side chapel.

It has been stolen twice

In 1794 French revolutionary troops took it to Paris. It came back after Waterloo.

In September 1944, retreating German forces removed it again — carried out, according to the account that has stuck, wrapped in mattresses in a Red Cross truck. It went into a salt mine in the Austrian Alps along with a great deal of other looted work, and it was recovered from there at the end of the war by the Allied unit charged with finding and returning stolen art.

So the statue in front of you has made two forced round trips across Europe and come home both times. It stands behind glass now.

The same church holds the end of a dynasty

Also in the choir are the tombs of the last Duke of Burgundy and his daughter — the family whose court made Bruges one of the richest and most artistically productive places in fifteenth-century Europe, and whose line ran out here.

The Duke was killed in battle in 1477 and his daughter died at twenty-five after a fall from a horse. Her marriage had already handed the Burgundian lands to the Habsburgs, which is how a Flemish trading city ended up being governed from Vienna and then Madrid.

What being seven rather than thirty changes

A private group can stand in front of one object for as long as it holds you. That is the whole argument for this version of the day: you can spend twenty minutes on a single statue if you want to, and the guide's day does not fall apart.

It also means the walk goes at your pace and the questions are yours.

Practicalities

You are collected from your Paris address and returned there, which removes the two most tiring parts of a long day.

The canal cruise runs from April to October only. Outside those months the day is a walking one.

Lunch is not included; the free time is when you eat. Departure from Bruges is at about half past four, reaching Paris around nine in the evening.