Saint John’s Hospital

This guide to Saint John's Hospital in Bruges opens with a question: why did the dying of this city spend their final nights inside a room built for some of the finest paintings ever made? It traces the hospital's roots to 1188, when Bruges was one of Europe's richest trading capitals, and follows the wealth that let it hire the painter Hans Memling in the 1480s to build something unusual, a golden reliquary shaped like a miniature Gothic chapel. You'll hear about Saint Ursula, the legendary princess it was made to honor, and the ritual around when the chapel was opened and closed. Look up at the oak-beamed roof that has sheltered patients here for nearly eight centuries.