Basilica of the Holy Blood

This guide to the Basilica of the Holy Blood in Bruges opens with Count Thierry of Alsace stepping off a ship in 1150 carrying a vial he swore held Christ's own blood, carried home from the Second Crusade. It follows the historians who found no proof of that story anywhere in Jerusalem or in any document before the 1250s, and the alternate trail one historian traced instead, back to the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and Bruges's own Count Baldwin the ninth. You'll hear how his daughter Joan later passed the relic on to the city. Climb to the upper chapel to see the object at the center of the dispute for yourself.