The Prince’s Court at Bruges: A Reconstruction of the Lost Residence of the Dukes of Burgundy

Abstract

The so-called Prince’s Court at Bruges was one of the main residences of the dukes of Burgundy during the 15th century. At the end of the 14th century it had been renovated by Philip the Bold, after which several, sometimes major, adjustments were made, most of them commissioned by his grandson’s wife Isabella of Portugal. This essay seeks to reconstruct the ducal apartments at the core of the mid-15th century residence, while exploring the different construction phases from 1395 until 1468, the year of the marriage festivities of Philip the Good’s son Charles the Bold and Margaret of York. As has been shown before, life at the Burgundian court was regulated by a complex set of rules, reflected in the spatial organization of the residence. Ceremonial space thus constituted the common ground between residences from different Burgundian lands, such as Flanders (Bruges, Ghent, and Lille) and Brabant (Brussels), from different urban contexts, and with different building histories. This particular aspect of court architecture, however, proves difficult to capture in words. Our essay explores the possibilities offered by computer-aided design software to visualize and test different hypotheses, chiefly based on a close examination of the surviving accounts. Because of the many uncertainties concerning individual building phases, a complete historical phase model of the Bruges case is impossible, but the main stages of construction can now be defined with greater certainty, and the spatial sequence underlying the ducal apartments, as completed by 1468, can be reconstructed.