Despite battling overtourism, this beautiful European city can be magical

Bruges is the fairytale European city of your dreams: chocolate shops and cobblestone streets, canals filled with swans and, if you believe the hype, tourists elbow to elbow. It is considered Europe’s best preserved medieval town.

But in 2018 visitor numbers reached a record high of 8.3 million. Politicians beat the war drums, locals were up in arms and like Amsterdam and Venice, overtourism was the buzzword dominating headlines. In 2019, a five-year plan was developed to address the problem.

Horsedrawn carriages add to the fairytale quality of Bruges.Credit: Jan D’HondtMarkt Brugge

Arriving by train five years (and one pandemic) later, I wanted to see whether overtourism is still an issue. Crossing the canal into the walled city on a chilly December morning, the streets are empty, save for locals biking along the cobblestones. I check into my three-star hotel, one of a number of smaller, owner-operator hotels thriving thanks to a 2002 decision by the city to ban vacation homes. The ban is part of Bruges’s long-term strategy to manage tourism, along with no longer promoting in-and-out cruise ship tours and limiting how many ships can dock on any given day in the nearby port of Zeebrugge.

The 2019-2024 mitigation measures haven’t meant locking the city gates: it’s about making Bruges a better place for both locals and visitors. And yet, the first local I speak to isn’t happy. His shop sells designer vintage clothes, mid-century ceramics and features an art gallery. He tells me that there is nowhere for locals to shop, that tourists clean out the supermarkets and that artists and everyday people don’t have a space to work. But located just a block from the city’s central square, known as the Markt, he admits many of his customers are tourists. And not all come from far away. My visit coincides with Winter Glow, a light festival similar to Sydney’s Vivid.

Part of Bruges’ strategic plan aims to increase genuine interactions between locals and tourists, and push visitors out of the main tourist centre to other parts of the walled city. And in my experience, it’s successful. Rugged up against the cold, I join a small crowd following blue-tinted lamp posts through the walled city between light installations. The route winds through tiny lanes and along canals, and into areas I’d not come across on a dozen visits previously.

If you visit Bruges in December you may catch Winter Glow, a festival of lights. Credit: Jan DarthetWintergloed

Along the way, locals stand outside their homes with friends hosting drinks; I stop to pat a golden retriever and end up walking with an older Flemish couple who had driven from a town 45 minutes away.

“When COVID hit, everyone discovered their own backyard”, they tell me. They believe there’s now more Belgian nationals visiting Bruges than ever.

Breaking down visitor numbers, they seem to have a point. In 2023, more than 8.3 million people visited Bruges, and 4.45 million were from Belgium.

The next morning I visit The Chocolate Line, a chocolate store run by Belgian celebrity chef, Dominique Persoone. The people in line around me are all Flemish, and they mean business: the lady next to me has driven from a town an hour away and buys boxed chocolates worth more than €100 to send to relatives. I ask her if Bruges has too many tourists.

“It’s beautiful,” she shrugs, “but busy”.

Fresh waffles from street markets in Bruges.Credit: iStock

Regardless of where they come from, the big issue for Bruges is day-trippers. Bruges is an incredibly rich cultural destination, filled with incredible art, architecture, history and fine dining. But when a simple day trip with its canals, swans and cobblestone squares fills the traveller’s cup, it’s hard to get people to stay longer.

And I even end up being part of the problem. I enjoy Winter Glow so much, I bring my family back during the peak holiday period two weeks later.

We are bad tourists: my family and I drive into the historic centre from our relative’s place two hours away. We park in the city’s underground car park, take the scenic boat ride through the canals, eat overpriced waffles, skip a horse-and-carriage ride as the line is too long and – having become addicted – nip into The Chocolate Line again, watching Persoone tip silver buckets of dried cocoa pods into a roaster, while fans, mostly Belgian locals, knock on the kitchen window to ask for selfies. It is shoulder-to-shoulder with tourists at the Markt, but perfectly bearable out of the main drag.

So is Bruges overcrowded? It depends on where you go, and when. Like the main centre of any other well-known city in Europe, visit during peak period and you’ll be swimming with the tide of tourists.

But stay overnight and you’ll find the city retains a magical, almost timeless quality: the sounds of hooves on the cobblestones, the toll of bells at night, the light reflected in the canals, and walking alone through the backstreets – the feeling, just for a fleeting moment, that the city is entirely your own.

The details

Fly
Singapore Airlines fly from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Cairns and Brisbane with connections to Brussels. See singaporeair.com

Visit
Bruges is accessible by train from Brussels, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris and London. See belgiantrain.be

Stay
The three-star Hotel Marcel has small but comfortable rooms in a great location from €95 ($157) See hotelmarcel.be/en/

The writer stayed as a guest of Visit Bruges. See visitbruges.be