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Bruges welcomes nearly eight million visitors each year, making it one of the most visited cities in Europe. This intensity of tourism has a profound impact on daily life in the historic city center. For that reason, the relationship between Bruges and tourism has become a new collecting focus within social history collection of Musea Brugge. The theme is of great interest to both residents and visitors of Bruges. What happens in Bruges also fits into a much broader story of European cities confronted with mass tourism.
While the early development of Bruges as a tourist destination in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been extensively studied, this research project focuses on the period after the breakthrough of mass tourism in the 1950s.
We want to examine how historical re-enactments, travel guides, maps, photography, and film contributed to the construction of the tourist image, and how traditional practices, artisanal products, and regional dishes were commodified. The research also explores the tension between official city marketing (the desired self-image) and lived tourist practices.
A second focus is on the evolution and meaning of souvenirs as material carriers of urban and national representation.
In addition to the symbolic dimensions of tourism, we will also give attention to the social and economic actors who shape it: guides, coach drivers, hospitality staff, shopkeepers, street performers…
Finally, we will study the impact of digital media—from social networks and user-generated content to online reviews and AI—on the contemporary representation and tourist experience of Bruges.
By combining these perspectives, the project aims to contribute to a multi-layered understanding of the relationship between tourism, urban identity formation, and residents’ experiences in Bruges since the rise of mass tourism.
The research can take various forms: literature review, online research, fieldwork (observation and documentation through photography and video), street interviews, surveys…
Musea Brugge welcomes students of history, heritage studies, cultural anthropology, and tourism for a collaboration to explore aspects of this research in the form of an internship, research paper, or thesis. The content of such a placement or research project can be determined in mutual agreement.
Interested? Please contact Geert Souvereyns, Curator of Daily Life Heritage
