Vismarkt: The Colonnade of the Fishwives

Why is it significant?

Step onto the wide paving stones of the Vismarkt and walk among the neoclassical stone columns of its covered market colonnade.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the wide paving stones of the Vismarkt and walk among the neoclassical stone columns of its covered market colonnade. Designed in eighteen twenty-one by city architect Jan-Robert Calloigne, this handsome covered portico features eighty-four Tuscan stone pillars supporting a tiled roof, erected to provide a clean, shaded trading hall for the city's fishmongers. The colonnade forms a graceful rectangular portico facing the canal, its classical Tuscan columns carved from durable blue limestone quarried from the hills of Wallonia.

Before eighteen twenty-one, the fish market operated directly on the Grote Markt beneath the Belfry. However, the city council banished the fishmongers to this canal-side location because the overpowering odor of gutting fish, sea brine, and rotting entrails offended bourgeois shopkeepers and churchgoers on the main square. Fishmongers were organized into an ancient municipal guild that held monopoly rights over all fresh seafood brought into Bruges from the fishing villages of the North Sea coast.

Look down at the flat grey granite slabs that form the market counters. For generations, energetic fishwives in wooden clogs shouted daily cries here, selling North Sea cod, grey shrimp from Zeebrugge, rays, and eels brought directly from fishing trawlers moored along the canal. The stone slabs still bear the shallow drainage grooves where ice and saltwater drained away.

Today, the Vismarkt maintains a dual personality: early on weekday mornings, traditional fishmongers still sell fresh North Sea catches from their chilled stalls, while in the afternoons and on weekends, the open colonnade transforms into a lively open-air market for vintage postcards, handmade lace, and local antiques. Across the canal from the fish market stands the historic Tanner's Square, or Huidenvettersplein, where leather workers once cured hides in shallow pits beside the flowing water.

Leave the fish market by the southern archway, cross the canal bridge onto Predikherenstraat, and enter the leafy paradise of Koningin Astridpark.