Government buildings. On the west are two houses which were once
of some note--the Cranenburg, from the windows of which, in olden
times, the Counts of Flanders, with the lords and ladies of their
Court, used to watch the tournaments and pageants for which Bruges
was celebrated, and in which Maximilian was imprisoned by the burghers
in 1488; and the Hôtel de Bouchoute, a narrow, square building
of dark red brick, with a gilded lion over the doorway. But the
Cranenburg, once the 'most magnificent private residence in the
Market-Place,' many years ago lost every trace of its original
splendour, and is now an unattractive hostelry, the headquarters
of a smoking club; while the Hôtel de Bouchoute, turned into a
clothier's shop, has little to distinguish it from its commonplace
neighbours. Nevertheless,

'In the Market-Place of Bruges stands the Belfry old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.'

It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first
belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least
is certain, that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient
archives of the town perished, destroyed the greater part of an
old belfry, which some suppose may have been erected in the ninth
century. On two subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth
centuries, the present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former
structure, was damaged by fire; and now it stands on the south side
of the Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive
building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn,
weather-beaten, and majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been
said, 'this Belfry has watched over the city of Bruges. It has
beheld her triumphs and her failures, her glory and her shame,