The earliest surviving document about the hospital dates from 1188, parts of the fabric are 12th-century, and Musea Brugge describes it as one of the oldest preserved hospital buildings in Europe. Lay brothers and sisters ran it for the sick, the poor and travelling pilgrims — the rule was care regardless of origin or class — and it was still a working hospital until 1977. That matters when you walk in: this is not a gallery built to look like a medieval ward, it is the ward.
Seven works by Hans Memling are here, and four of them were commissioned by the hospital’s own staff and have hung in the building since the late 15th century. They are the Triptych of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist, painted for the high altar of the hospital church; the Triptych of the Adoration of the Magi, commissioned by brother Jan Floreins; the Lamentation of Christ, commissioned by brother Adriaan Reins; and the Shrine of St Ursula, a gilded oak reliquary of the 1480s built and painted as a miniature Gothic chapel, with the legend of Ursula and her companions running along both sides in six panels. Look at the shrine’s roundels and the little carved figures on the gable ends, not just the paintings. The other three are the Diptych of Maarten van Nieuwenhove, a portrait of a young woman, and a portrait of a member of the De Rojas family.
Two more things are included in the same ticket and both are easy to miss. The attic carries what the museum calls one of the oldest monumental oak roof trusses in Europe, and now houses the Closer to Memling installation — hands-on tables, polyphonic music of Memling’s period and a screen nearly five metres square. Across the courtyard, the hospital’s 17th-century pharmacy survives with its period interior and a herb garden.
One honest note: Musea Brugge deliberately mixes contemporary art into the wards — Berlinde De Bruyckere beside the Ursula shrine, Patricia Piccinini, a Giuseppe Penone in marble and bronze. Some visitors find it sharpens the room and some find it an intrusion. Nobody is warned about it at the door, so consider yourself warned.
