Volkskundemuseum

The Volkskundemuseum occupies a long, low row of whitewashed brick almshouses with terracotta-tiled roofs, situated at number forty-three Balstraat. Built in the seventeenth century as charitable housing for the city's tailors and shoemakers, these small, connected dwellings now hold recreations of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Bruges life. Unlike the gilded cathedrals and grand merchant halls found elsewhere in the city, this site focuses on the daily existence of ordinary laborers and their families.