Belfry of Bruges

This guide to the Belfry of Bruges starts with the forty-seven bells ringing overhead and a line from the poet Longfellow describing a tower thrice consumed by fire and thrice rebuilt. It climbs the three hundred sixty-six steps past the old treasury room, into the story of a Hanseatic trading boom that once filled the square below with wool, cloth and merchants speaking a dozen languages. Listen for how the tower doubled as both watchtower and bank vault for a city guarding its own riches.