For information on what to do in the evening, pick up the free monthly newsletter “events@brugge” from the tourist office, hotels, and performance venues or check online at www.brugge.be for details of what’s on where.

The ultramodern Concertgebouw, the home base of the Symfonieorkest van Vlaanderen (Flanders Symphony Orchestra) is the city’s main venue for opera, classical music, theater, and dance. This has left the former principal venue for these events in Bruges, the circa-1869 Stadsschouwburg, to back up the mother ship by mounting smaller-scale performances. Theater at both venues is likely to be in Dutch or French, and rarely, if ever, in English.

Contemporary dance, drama by rising artists, rock and pop concerts, festivals, and lots of children’s activities are held in the futuristic Magdalena Concert Hall.

One for jazz fans: Between October and May there are free jam sessions in the foyer of Kunstencentrum (Arts Center) De Werf every second Monday of the month at 8 pm. Also on the agenda here are productions for children, contemporary drama, and dance.

The summer months between April and October see high drama of a different sort each Friday and Saturday night with fire-eating, falconry, juggling, and feasting at a mock medieval banquet to celebrate the wedding of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, to Margaret of York in the hallowed setting of the neo-Gothic former Heilige-Hartkerk (Sacred Heart Church).