A popular day trip from Bruges, the small Flemish town of Damme still feels a world away from the mass tourism of its much larger neighbour. More a village than a town, it’s a picturesque place with a dramatic history. Part of that history can only properly be seen from above. What a satellite picture reveals is a perfect star fort sliced down the middle by an arrow straight canal, the Damse Vaart, running from Bruges to the Netherlands.
On one side of the canal there are houses and churches. On the other, nothing but green fields. Half of Damme, it would appear, has simply disappeared. The River Reie ran through Damme and was a vital trade link before being canalised. The canal is 900 years old, but what you see today was the creation of Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 19th century, when occupying French forces tried to extend the canal to the River Scheldt.
Thanks to Napoleon’s defeat the project was never finished, but that came too late to save Damme’s northern half from destruction. At least the half that survived contains Damme’s most important buildings. The medieval Stadhuis and the wondrously named 13th century, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Geboorte en Heilige Philippuskerk with its pleasant cemetery, are just two of the highlights.
Damme was an important trading and military centre long before Napoleon arrived though. In the 13th century, Bruges was one of Europe’s wealthiest towns. As one of the outer harbours of Bruges, Damme played a vital role in generating that wealth. This itself was down to a piece of luck, or rather a 1134 storm that broke through the Flemish coast and formed the Zwin inlet.
This was an historic turning point for Bruges, an inland city that had lost its direct access to the sea in the mid-11th century due to the silting up of its river. The Zwin inlet changed that. A canal linking Bruges with Damme and other port towns such as Sluis, meant trade between Bruges and the rest of Europe expanded rapidly. The Zwin was such a valuable waterway it was nicknamed the “Golden Inlet”.
So large was the port that it’s said the French fleet of 1,700 ships could anchor here. Quite a few of those ship were at anchor in 1213, when an English fleet captured dozens of them and their cargoes of gold, silver, wine and other valuables. Two centuries later the Zwin began to silt up, but Damme continued to be important. In 1468, two of the most powerful people in Europe, Charles the Bold of Burgundy and Margaret of York, got married here.
The star fort walls, now a pleasant walk around the town, were built in the 16th century as defences during the Eighty Years War, or the War of Dutch Independence, as it’s also known. It’s difficult to imagine that a place the size of Damme played such a significant role in European affairs, or that for over two centuries this was one of northern Europe’s most important towns.
The canal today is lined with beautiful poplars, some date back to Napoleonic times, and makes a wonderful walk or cycle from Bruges. I walked it on a spring Sunday morning in the company of cyclists and dog walkers. It was lovely. Given all that history, an hour or two is all you need to see pretty much everything in Damme. But find an outdoor table at one of the many cafes and restaurants and drink in the atmosphere.
There was a steady flow of visitors to the town, but it never felt busy. After a snack and a Belgian beer, I visited the main sights before making my way through the surrounding farmland to rejoin the canal and returned to Bruges.
