Gruuthusemuseum – 2021 Winner of the Portimão Museum Prize: Europe’s Most Welcoming New Museum

Gruuthusemuseum, one of thirteen museums in Musea Brugge, a municipal entity, is dedicated to the city’s 500-year history. Housed in one of the few remaining 15th-century city palaces, the museum is named for its most famous resident, the Flemish nobleman Louis de Gruuthuse. The museum was established in 1883 by the Société Archéologique for its collection. The city of Bruges purchased the Gruuthuse palace in 1875 and dis- played the collection there. In 1955, the city acquired the collection, which had greatly expanded over the years, and initiated a ve-year renovation project in 2014.

The renovation included not only the Gruuthusemuseum itself and its courtyard, which was levelled and repaved to make it wheelchair accessible, but the entire heritage site, including neo-Gothic buildings opposite the palace and Church of Our Lady. The palace, now a museum, and church are two monumental landmarks that form the heart of Burgundian Brugges. A striking new reception pavilion was also added. A remarkable crowdfunding campaign supported the restoration of De Gruuthuse’s private chapel, with its original 15th-century oak plank floor and panelling. This extraordinary chapel connects the palace and the church. Most of the palace windows have been opened and special filters and glass installed in order to bring daylight into the rooms and offer beautiful views that connect the palace to the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. In accordance with De Gruuthuse’s motto, “Plus est en vous’’ (There is more in you, or more colloquially, you can always surpass yourself), the restoration and refurbishment are of the highest quality.

To step into the renovated palace today is to travel in time. The permanent exhibition within the palace’s evocative rooms is no longer a Wunderkammer of decorative and applied art. Instead, a multilayered exhibition featuring highlights from the collection presents a history of Brugges that extends from the prosperous medieval period and lesser known 17th and 18th-centuries to the neo-Gothic revival of the city in the 19th-century.