Memling Museum

Description:

• This museum is housed in the former Sint-Janshospitaal (Hospital of St. John), where the earliest wards date from the 13th century. To get a sense of the vastness of the wards when this was a functioning hospital, take a look at the old painting near the entrance that shows small, efficient bed units set into cubicles along the walls. The 17th-century Apothecary in the cloisters near the entrance is furnished exactly as it was when this building's main function was to care for the sick. It's worth lingering a while in fine weather in the hospital's courtyard, a pleasant place with benches and flowers.

  Nowadays visitors come to see the typical medieval hospital buildings filled with furniture and other objects that illustrate their history, as well as the magnificent collection of paintings by the German-born artist Hans Memling (ca. 1440-94), who moved to Bruges from Brussels in 1465 and became one of the city's most prominent residents. At this museum you find such Memling masterpieces as the three-paneled altarpiece of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, which consists of the paintings The Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, the Shrine of St Ursula, and Virgin with Child and Apple.

• © Frommer's 2013

Awards:

Frommer's

•  Highly Recommended 2010