Through My Lens: Heilig-Bloedbasiliek

For the Second Sunday of Lent, here’s another church from Brugge. This one is called the Heilig-Bloedbasiliek (Basilica of the Holy Blood). Its name comes from a vial of blood kept here, said to have been taken from the body of Christ by Joseph of Arimathea and brought to Brugge during the Crusades.

Located in a corner of the Burg, one of the squares in Brugge’s Old Town, you wouldn’t know it’s a church from its exterior; it blends right in with the Stadhuis next door. The Heilig-Bloedbasiliek is also unique in that it’s on two levels. The lower Romanesque chapel dates back to the twelfth century. I took the photo above in the upper chapel, which was built at the end of the fifteenth century in the Romanesque style and then rebuilt a century later in the Gothic style.

I quite liked the eighteenth-century pulpit. It was built in the shape of a globe to commemorate Mark 16:15, which says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.”