'
It redeems the Market-Place from mediocrity. How long ago the first
belfry tower of Bruges was built is unknown, but this at least
is certain, that in the year 1280 a fire, in which the ancient
archives of the town perished, destroyed the greater part of an
old belfry, which some suppose may have been erected in the ninth
century. On two subsequent occasions, in the fifteenth and eighteenth
centuries, the present Belfry, erected on the ruins of the former
structure, was damaged by fire; and now it stands on the south side
of the Market-Place, rising 350 feet above the Halles, a massive
building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, solemn,
weather-beaten, and majestic. 'For six hundred years,' it has been
said, 'this Belfry has watched over the city of Bruges. It has
beheld her triumphs and her failures, her glory and her shame,
her prosperity and her gradual decay, and, in spite of so many
vicissitudes, it is still standing to bear witness to the genius
of our forefathers, to awaken memories of old times and admiration
for one of the most splendid monuments of civic architecture which
the Middle Ages has produced.'[*]
[Footnote *: Gilliat-Smith, _The Story of Bruges_, p. 169 (Dent
and Co.
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