Basilica of the Holy Blood

Basilica of the Holy Blood tickets: which one to buy

Entry to both chapels is free. The treasury museum beside the upper chapel charges a small ticket and holds the reliquary of the Holy Blood, a silver and gold cylinder of 1617, along with vestments and the paintings given by the Noble Brotherhood. Veneration of the relic happens at fixed times each day, when a priest sits with the phial on a table and visitors may approach and touch it;

there is no charge and no booking. Guided tours of Bruges include the basilica and cost several times the museum ticket. The building is on the Burg square in the middle of the town, beside the town hall, and everything in Bruges is within fifteen minutes on foot. Nothing needs booking. The basilica's shop sells a booklet on the relic's history in several languages and is the only source of detail on site.

Visiting Basilica of the Holy Blood: what to see

Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, built a double chapel beside his residence in the 1130s and 1140s; the relic of the Holy Blood, said to have been collected by Joseph of Arimathea and brought from the Holy Land, is first recorded in Bruges in the middle of the twelfth century. The lower chapel of St Basil is the better building: a dark, low, unaltered Romanesque hall with heavy piers and almost no decoration, one of the most complete Romanesque interiors in Flanders.

A staircase climbs to the upper chapel, rebuilt in Gothic in the sixteenth century and repainted in the nineteenth in a dense neo-Gothic scheme of murals and stained glass. The relic is kept there in a rock-crystal phial. On Ascension Day the whole city stages the Procession of the Holy Blood through the streets. The staircase between the two chapels was built in the sixteenth century and its exterior facade on the Burg is Gothic with gilded statues of the counts of Flanders. Members of the Noble Brotherhood of the Holy Blood, founded in the thirteenth century, still guard the relic and wear their robes in the annual procession.

Basilica of the Holy Blood opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from mid-morning to late afternoon with a break at midday in some seasons and shorter hours in winter. Veneration times are posted at the door and are usually late morning and mid-afternoon. Bruges is crowded from April to October and around the Christmas market; the basilica is small and a coach group fills the stairs. The Procession of the Holy Blood on Ascension Day is a UNESCO-listed event and the town is full.

Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed in the chapels and not in the museum. Allow half an hour. The Burg square, the town hall's Gothic hall and the Markt with the belfry are all within two minutes. Bruges is at its quietest between November and February, when the basilica can be visited without a queue on the stairs.