Gruuthusemuseum

The Gruuthusemuseum in Bruges displays over 600 artifacts from the 15th to 19th centuries, including tapestries, stained glass, and sculptures.

Planning your visit

The Gruuthuse was the house of a family who grew rich on a monopoly: gruut, the herb mixture used to flavour and preserve beer before hops, and the right to tax it. Louis of Gruuthuse, the fifteenth-century lord who rebuilt the palace, was a soldier, diplomat and one of the great book collectors of his age, and he sheltered Edward IV of England here during his exile in 1471.

The museum reopened in 2019 after a long restoration, reorganised into three periods — the Burgundian golden age, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the nineteenth-century rediscovery of medieval Bruges — with over 600 objects: Flemish tapestries, stained glass, sculpture, lace, musical instruments and metalwork. The star piece is a polychrome bust of Charles V.

The building's most remarkable feature is the private oratory, a wooden gallery projecting directly into the choir of the Church of Our Lady next door, from which the family could attend mass without leaving home. It looks down on Michelangelo's Madonna of Bruges.

Allow ninety minutes. The main booking is an entry ticket, often combinable with the church. Current availability is shown below.