Guillaume Michiels, Belgium.

The Lady of the Goezeputstraat Bruges

A cloaked figure moves alone down a narrow cobbled lane in old Bruges, a distant church spire watching over the quiet street below.

The lane itself is the Goezeputstraat — one of the city's oldest, its name drifted from centuries of use. Originally "Vuldersstraat bij Sint-Salvators," it took the name "Ten Goesepitte" from around 1400, after the Heilig-Geesthospitaal that once stood here: a refuge run by Franciscan Third Order sisters from 1391, caring for Bruges' poor and sick until they left the site in the late 1700s. The convent buildings were demolished soon after, but the surrounding houses endured — among them a 16th–17th century dwelling with its distinctive Tudor-arched doorway, still standing at number 6 today.

The solitary woman Michiels captured could well be stepping from one of those very thresholds. Nearly a century on, the street's medieval character remains legible — the same gables, the same worn cobblestones — a rare case where the etching and the place it depicts have scarcely drifted apart.

Artist: Guillaume Michiels Medium: Pen-and-ink etching Date: 1926 Dimensions: to be confirmed Style: Belgian Architectural Drawing Themes: Bruges - Street - Architecture