This year, Bruges will be celebrating the Flemish Community Day with a special tribute to its iconic Belfry, a monument which has stood watch over the city for almost 800 years.
From 1 to 11 July 2025, the Market Square will be transformed into an open-air stage for The Belfry as Storyteller – the Story of Bruges. This free, immersive light and sound spectacle will guide visitors through eight centuries of Bruges’s and Flanders’s history.
In total, there will be 22 shows, at 10:30 pm and 11:00 pm spread over 11 evenings with a carillon concert preceding them every evening. Each presentation is a captivating combination of mapping, narration, music and special effects bringing to life eight centuries of local and Flemish heritage, with the Belfry as its narrator.
‘Eight centuries… That’s how long the Belfry has been there. A mainstay. A beacon. […] The Belfry has seen Bruges grow and prosper, as well as suffer and burn. The Belfry has heard merchants touting their wares, and the first bells ringing. The Belfry has seen monarchs come and go, troops march, it has heard the city laugh, and it has heard the city cry.’
The event is produced by the non-profit 11 July Committee, with support from the City of Bruges and the Flemish Government. Alfavision, famous for its Historium attraction, scripted the show and designed the projections, while PRG handled the technical and audiovisual setup.
The star of the event, the Belfry, is an 83-metre-high tower, that rewards those who climb its 366 steps with a unique panoramic view of Bruges. First constructed in 1240, when the city was a major centre of cloth trade, it has since been destroyed and rebuilt three times. Its enduring presence and stoic grandeur even inspired Henry Wandsworth Longfellow’s famous poem by, The Belfry of Bruges.
In the marketplace of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilt, still it watches o’er the town.
The show recounts the various important periods, including the Holy Blood relic, said to contain a cloth with the blood of Jesus Christ and brought to the city after the Second Crusade, and the establishment of the world’s first Bourse, in 1309. It also explores darker episodes such as the religious persecutions, long-standing social inequalities between guilds and merchant elites and the 1349 outbreak of the Black Death, which wiped out up to half the city’s population,
The first carillon, consisting of 35 bells, was installed in the tower in the 16th century. Today, spectators will enjoy 48 bells guiding through eight centuries of history, up to its current status as the ‘Venice of the North’ and a major tourist centre, a cultural jewel and tourist magnet so captivating that visitors are known to pocket its cobblestones as souvenirs.
The production took over six months to complete, involving a team of directors, screenwriters, dubbers, animators and historians. We used the latest technologies, including artificial intelligence, to create compelling and substantive content,’ Alfavision’s Els De Roy told Belgian news agency Belga.
