Coupure (Brugge)
Historic freight canal now hosting a free open-air summer swimming pool on a floating pontoon.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Coupure canal in Bruges opens with lifeguards watching swimmers where a freight canal once ran, then rewinds to the seventeen fifties, when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria authorized cutting this channel straight through the heart of the city so cargo ships could bypass the old, narrow canals. It follows the canal's shift from a working freight route into a quieter, recreational stretch of water, and the fragments of a demolished monastery still hidden nearby. Stand at the water's edge to picture two centuries of grain and cloth passing where paddleboards now drift.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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