Hanseatic History
A center of the Flemish textile trade, medieval Bruges hosted the most important of the four principal foreign stations, or Kontore, of the Hanseatic League (the other three were in London, Bergen, and Novgorod). The Hansa, as it was known, was a powerful, Baltic-based association of north-European trading towns that has been described, not entirely fancifully, as an early version of the European Union.
Bruges has a rich heritage of civic buildings from the Hanseatic period -- guild halls, exchanges, warehouses, and wealthy merchant residences. In the district around the Oosterlingenhuis, traders from Lübeck, Hamburg, Bremen, and other Hansa towns lived and worked. The league's most important assets were its Hansekoggen, square-sailed, broad-beamed wooden merchant ships that could carry 200 tons of cargo.
