Qualla: Brugge Railway Station

Brugge Railway Station: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lin ChangChih, Public domain. In 1879, a perfectly serviceable railway station was demolished in the middle of Bruges, packed onto carts, and trundled south to the town of Ronse for reassembly. The job took several years. When the workers finally stepped back to admire their reconstructed building, they noticed something unusual. The front of the station was facing the tracks, and the back was facing the street. They had rebuilt the entire thing backwards. The station still stands in Ronse today, still pointed the wrong way, a permanent monument to the perils of moving large buildings without an instruction manual.

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Image: Lin ChangChih | Public domain

Brugge Railway Station: When the Royals Came to Bruges

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0. The railway reached Bruges on 12 August 1838, and the inaugural train carried King Leopold I and Queen Louise-Marie. The line ran from Ghent to Bruges, passing right through the medieval walls and stopping at 't Zand, the broad open square inside the old city. A few weeks later a...

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Image: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brugge Railway Station: The Backwards Station

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Abhishek.ransingh, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1879 the original building had to go, and Bruges did something only Belgium could really do: rather than demolish it, the city offered the dismantled building to Ronse, eighty kilometers south, which needed a railway station of its own. Workers numbered the stones, loaded them...

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Image: Abhishek.ransingh | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brugge Railway Station: The Wars That Pushed the Station Out

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerrit Devinck, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1910 it was clear that a railway running through the historic core of Bruges was going to choke the medieval city forever. Engineers began surveying a new alignment that would loop around the southern edge of the old walls, leaving the inner city for pedestrians and cyclists. ...

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Image: Gerrit Devinck | CC BY-SA 3.0

Brugge Railway Station: One of the Busiest Doors in Belgium

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerrit Devinck, CC BY-SA 3.0. Today Brugge station is the tenth-busiest in the country - and given how small Bruges itself is, that ranking says everything about how many day-trippers come for the canals and the chocolate shops. A renovation that began in 2004 widened the passenger tunnel beneath the platform...

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Image: Gerrit Devinck | CC BY-SA 3.0