Encounters at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, The Netherlands)

Rafael Edem Kouto, Gwladys Gambie, and Rouzbey Shadpey in their studios at the Jan van Eyck Academie (October 2025, Maastricht, The Netherlands).

In the heart of Maastricht, the Jan van Eyck Academie stands as a quiet yet potent sanctuary for contemporary thought and creation. It is not an art school, nor a gallery, but something in between: a place where artists, designers, and thinkers from all over the world come together to reimagine what art can be when given time, trust, and tools.

Walking through the studios during the Open Studios days feels like entering parallel worlds. Each resident unfolds a vision that stretches beyond their discipline—woven through questions of history, identity, and repair. Among them this year: Rafael Edem Kouto, Gwladys Gambie, and Rouzbeh Shadpey — three distinct voices united by a shared urgency to heal and reimagine.

Rafael Edem Kouto

Rafael Kouto, a Swiss creative director and fashion designer of Togolese and Ghanaian origin, builds his practice on the ethics of reuse and cultural continuity. His work, deeply rooted in West-African material culture, embraces upcycling as both method and message. By transforming discarded textiles and objects, Kouto turns what was once waste into a vehicle of memory and renewal.

His ongoing project Artefacts & Notes from Altared Futures – Temporarily Closed for Healing examines portable artifacts that once travelled across the Atlantic with the slave trade — talismans, fabrics, small objects that survived displacement. Through these, Kouto forges an emotional connection between craft and spirituality, between what is lost and what can still be made sacred again.

Gwladys Gambie

From Martinique, still formally a French colony, Gwladys Gambie brings to Maastricht a dreamlike yet defiant visual universe. Her work explores the representation of Caribbean black bodies and the female condition under the long shadow of colonialism. Through drawing, painting, writing, and performance — and lately through embroidery — she builds an oneiric space where fantasy and critique meet.

In her project Metaphor of the Coconut Tree, Gambie confronts “doudouism,” the exoticized image of the Caribbean perpetuated by literature and tourism. Her hand-drawn portraits of trees and textile installations challenge the coconut’s lazy association with paradise, instead revealing the violence of history embedded in its trunk and leaves. Each stitch, each line, becomes an act of reclaiming narrative — turning ornament into testimony.

Rouzbeh Shadpey

Physician, writer, and artist Rouzbeh Shadpey brings the language of the clinic into dialogue with the language of poetry. His research unpacks the aesthetics of chronic fatigue and the colonial legacy of medical power. Through video, sound, and text, Shadpey transforms the experience of illness into a site of resistance — a way of thinking that honours those whose suffering has been dismissed as “medically contested.”

In his installation Musique Chronique, he stages a scenography that may or may not unfold into performance — an unfinished ritual about the transformation of pain into music. Elsewhere in the academy, a second intervention mirrors the first: not music as healing, but music as illness, a meditation on the dissonance between harmony and violence. His work resonates as both a lament and a call for empathy — an appeal for recognition of human vulnerability in times of devastation.

A house for multiplicity

Together, these artists exemplify what the Jan van Eyck Academie does best: it shelters voices that speak from fracture, from history, from the desire to mend. Here, discarded fabric becomes altar cloth; embroidery becomes resistance; sound becomes protest.

The academy’s studios are not quiet after all — they hum with the slow, persistent work of reimagining the world.

Jan van Eyck Academie

Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) at the Threshold of the house where she was born

Kneeling Joan of Arc—the statue of a prayerful Jeanne d’Arc that crowns her birthplace door—armor stilled, sword at rest: a warrior pausing before action.

Meet Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc; 1412 - 1431) first, not astride a horse but on her knees. The statue shows a young fighter in prayer: gauntlets folded, sword quiet along the thigh, the plates of her armor stacked like the ribs of a bell. Her face is steady, hair falling in waves, a small ruff softening the steel. It’s a later homage to her memory, yet the essentials are pure Jeanne—courage and devotion sharing the same body.

Now place her where she belongs: above the door of the house where she was born, in Domrémy. The second image records that doorway—a modest entrance that once carried this very sentinel on its keystone. In a village of ordinary stone, the townspeople crowned an ordinary threshold with a praying soldier, as if to bless every departure that began there.

Print of the doorway of Joan of Arc’s birthplace, Domrémy-la-Pucelle (france): a tiny Gothic canopy with the royal fleurs-de-lis with flanking heraldic shields.

Look closely at the signs above the door. A tiny Gothic canopy frames three shields (escutcheons). The central one bears the three fleurs-de-lis of the French kings—the emblem of the crown whose cause Joan championed. The flanking shields each repeat a single fleur-de-lis, echoing loyalty to France. Beneath them runs a narrow motto band (blurred in the print), a ribbon of words that once made the message explicit: this house remembers the Maid and the monarchy she helped restore. The canopy’s pointed, chapel-like form borrows the language of churches, turning a domestic doorway into a small shrine.

Together, statue and portal tell the story better than any plaque. From this humble house stepped an extraordinary girl. And before the charge and the banners, there was this: a pause for prayer on the threshold—readiness gathered in stillness—then the open road.

Rotterdam my City — De Hef — A Bridge for Life Itself

The Koningshavenbrug (better known as “De Hef”) - Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Across the northern edge of Rotterdam’s old harbor rises De Hef, the city’s iconic railway lift bridge — a monument of steel and symmetry. Built in 1927 to replace an older swing bridge destroyed in a ship collision, it was a marvel of its time: a vertical-lift bridge whose entire central span could rise to let ships pass beneath. For decades, trains thundered over it, carrying goods and passengers between north and south, its motion symbolizing the city’s pulse of progress.

When Rotterdam rebuilt after the Second World War, De Hef remained — scarred but standing, a survivor among ruins. It was finally decommissioned in 1993, after the construction of the rail tunnel that made it redundant. Yet public outcry saved it from demolition, and it became a protected monument, a silent figure in the skyline.

Then came a new dream. The Belgian architect Luc Deleu imagined giving De Hef an entirely different destiny — no longer a bridge for trains, but a bridge for life itself. In his visionary plan, the structure would become a civic platform suspended above the city: a place where every key event in human life — birth, marriage, death — would be officially declared. The bridge, with its 360-degree view over Rotterdam, would become a stage for existence, a place where the city could literally rise to mark its most intimate moments.

The plan was never realized, but its spirit endures. De Hef still towers over the water — a relic of movement, a monument to imagination, and a reminder that even in a city defined by rebuilding, some structures continue to lift not trains, but the human story itself.

Between Despair and Hope: The Sound of Ghanni Maastricht

Ghanni Maastricht performing at the Jan van Eyck Academie Open Studios Days (October 2025).

At the Jan van Eyck Academie, voices rose in harmony — soft at first, then firm, like a tide refusing to retreat. The choir Ghanni Maastricht, a collective of “Musicians for Palestine”, filled the air with Holm — Arabic for Dream.

The song, originally by the Tunisian artist Emel, speaks of imagining a world rebuilt from pain — a place where love and hope can grow again. Its words were written long before the present war, yet in the shadow of Gaza’s devastation they resonate with unbearable clarity:

If I could close my eyes and the dreams take me by the hand,
I would rise and fly in a new sky and forget my sorrows.

Since the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s two year devastating response, Gaza has become a symbol of suffering and endurance. Today, amid a fragile ceasefire, peace remains elusive — the future of the Palestinian people uncertain, suspended between grief and survival.

Ghanni’s performance did not pretend to offer solutions. Instead, it offered a space for compassion, a reminder that art can keep our humanity alive when politics fails. In their voices, sorrow turned into resistance, and music became a fragile bridge between despair and hope.

Picasso Arrives in Paris

“Picasso llegando a París con Jaume Andreu Bonsons” (Paris, May 1901) - seen in Berlin.

In May 1901, a 19-year-old Pablo Picasso arrived for the second time in Paris — no longer the carefree prodigy who had first come the year before, but a young man changed by grief. Just months earlier, his close friend Carles Casagemas had taken his own life, an event that would haunt Picasso for years and give birth to his Blue Period.

This moment of return is captured in his drawing “Picasso llegando a París con Jaume Andreu Bonsons”, executed in colored wax crayons on card. The work shows Picasso beside his friend Jaume Andreu Bonsons, another Catalan painter, as they enter the city that would shape modern art. Their faces carry both determination and fatigue — the look of two young men stepping into a new chapter, carrying memory as baggage.

Only weeks after this arrival, Picasso held his first major exhibition at Ambroise Vollard’s gallery, marking the start of his Paris years and his rapid transformation from promise to legend.

Seen today, “Picasso llegando a París” feels like a hinge between innocence and maturity — a fragile record of friendship, resilience, and the moment when the artist’s personal sorrow began to turn into art.

Russia, The Eternal Return of Suppression: From Chaos to Putin

Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.

The 1990s in Russia were chaotic, hopeful, and brutal all at once. The Soviet collapse brought political freedom, but also economic ruin. Millions saw their savings vanish as inflation soared. State assets were sold off in rigged auctions, creating a new class of billionaires — the oligarchs — while ordinary Russians slid into poverty.

The Yeltsin Years
Boris Yeltsin presided over a turbulent democracy. Parliament clashed with the president; in 1993, tanks shelled the Russian White House during a political crisis. Chechnya declared independence, leading to a bloody war that humiliated the Russian army and deepened public discontent.

The Rise of Putin
In 1999, Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned, naming former KGB officer Vladimir Putin as acting president. Promising order after a decade of chaos, Putin won election in 2000. His early years coincided with a surge in oil prices, fueling economic growth and restoring a sense of stability.

Consolidation of Power
Putin moved quickly to centralize authority. Independent television networks were taken over by the state; regional governors lost their autonomy; political opponents were sidelined or prosecuted. The second war in Chechnya was waged with brutal efficiency, crushing separatism but leaving a legacy of repression.

Further Reading:

  • Anna Politkovskaya – Putin’s Russia (2004)

  • Masha Gessen – The Man Without a Face (2012)

  • Fiona Hill & Clifford Gaddy – Mr. Putin (2013)

  • David E. Hoffman – The Oligarchs (2002)

Rotterdam's Old Harbor

Rotterdam’s Old Harbor (Oude Haven).

At the edge of the modern city, the Oude Haven still feels like Rotterdam’s heartbeat. Historic barges float quietly in the water, their polished wood and ropes recalling the time when this was a working port, filled with the smell of tar and salt.

Beside them rises Het Witte Huis, once Europe’s first skyscraper — elegant, white, and proud, a survivor of the old city that was lost in 1940. Behind it, the Willemsbrug ties the past to the present, its steel lines echoing the masts below.

Far in the distance, you can just make out De Hef, the old railway lift bridge — a reminder that Rotterdam’s story has always been about transport.

Today the Oude Haven is a place to linger: cafés along the quay, reflections on the water, and the sense that here, in this small harbor, the whole spirit of Rotterdam still comes home.

The Siege of Dijon (1513)

Siege of Dijon by the Swiss on 1513, Musee des Beaux Arts de Dijon.

Step close to the tapestry and let your eyes travel from left to right. It reads like a film strip: many moments stitched into a single scene. The label calls it Le Siège de Dijon en 1513—a Flemish work from the early 16th century. What it shows is not one picture but a sequence: the arrival of the Swiss and Comtois allies of the Empire, the city’s desperate answer, and the deal that ended the crisis.

Left edge — the enemy gathers

A sloping meadow swells toward Dijon’s walls, thick with soldiers and gear. You can count the pikes and halberds like a comb. Drummers beat time beside a forest of lances and standards—look for cantonal banners, including the bear of Bern—and a ring of tents marks the commanders’ camp.
At the foot of the walls, early field guns squat on wooden carriages; gunners touch fuses while others haul gabions and mantlets into place. A breach opens where the batteries bite at the masonry. It’s busy, brutal work, but the tapestry keeps its poise: even the fallen are arranged like notes on a staff.

Center — faith on the ramparts

Now the mood pivots. Two slender architectural posts frame the drama on the walls: a procession pouring along the battlements. Clergy in embroidered copes, acolytes with thuribles and processional crosses, city magistrates in long gowns—everyone moves as one. At their heart is the talisman Dijon trusted when the cannons spoke: the statue of Notre-Dame de Bon-Espoir (Our Lady of Good Hope), carried high as if the rampart itself had become a church aisle.
This is the moment the city remembered most. On 12 September 1513 the statue was borne around the defenses; the tapestry freezes that turn of the story, letting incense and prayer counterweigh powder and shot.

Look up at the skyline behind them: Dijon becomes a dense stage set of towers, steeples, and tiled roofs—not a map-accurate view but a civic self-portrait. Heraldic cartouches and small shields float in the sky like captions, reminding you that this is not just any city under siege; it is Dijon, capital of a wounded but defiant Burgundy.

Right edge — words stop the war

The procession flows toward a gate scene crowded with officials and envoys. Here comes the second turning point. On 13 September, before the Porte-Neuve, the governor Louis II de La Trémoille negotiated an accord with the besiegers. The tapestry shows the choreography of a settlement: hands extended, a parchment displayed, soldiers leaning in while the artillery still points outward. To either side, skirmishes sputter on—ladders raised, muskets leveled—because peace rarely arrives all at once. But the center of gravity has shifted from weapons to words.

How the tapestry tells the tale

  • It uses continuous narrative: the same wall carries the viewer through days of history without a cut.

  • The palette—cool blues, pale straw, and rose—is typical of South Netherlandish weaving, with silk highlights that once flashed like armor in the sun.

  • The millefleurs ground (sprinkled with small plants) domesticates the battlefield, as if to insist that this is still the Burgundian countryside, even under threat.

  • Everywhere, contrasts: tents vs. towers, drums vs. bells, gun smoke vs. incense. Steel doesn’t dominate; it competes with ritual, and ritual holds its ground.

What to look for up close

  • The bear standard among the Swiss—small but unmistakable.

  • Gunners ramming charges and lighting fuses; wheelbarrows and carts stacked with shot.

  • The reliquary-like canopies above parts of the procession, turning the wall-walk into a sacred route.

  • Faces peering from windows and rooflines, tiny witnesses woven into the cityscape.

  • The border’s fruit and foliage, a reminder that life continues at the very edge of war.

In a single woven breath, this tapestry carries you from assault to supplication to agreement. It is less a snapshot than a civic memory palace: Dijon under siege, Dijon in prayer, Dijon making peace—three rooms of the same house, unlocked as you walk along the wall.

From the Archive: La Dama at the Lange Voorhout with Zoë Wijnsouw (The Hague, The Netherlands)

Zoë Wijnsouw with ‘La Dama’ from Manolo Valdés (2001) in The Hague, 2010, by Barend Jan de Jong.

In the summer of 2010, the stately trees of the Lange Voorhout in The Hague looked down on a remarkable guest: La Dama (2001), a three-metre-high bronze sculpture by Spanish artist Manolo Valdés. With her majestic circular headdress and calm, archaic face, she evoked one of Spain’s greatest archaeological treasures — the mysterious Dama de Elche, a limestone bust dating back to the 4th century BC.

Valdés did not attempt to copy the ancient figure. Instead, he reimagined her presence: monumental yet human, classical yet modern. The bronze surface captured the shifting Dutch light, turning gold in the morning sun and deep green by evening. Between the linden trees of the Voorhout, she seemed both visitor and guardian — a piece of Mediterranean memory grounded in northern soil.

The Goodyear Altarpiece – An English Gift to Santiago de Compostela


Two panels from the Goodyear Altarpiece (c. 1456, Nottingham workshops; now in the museum of the Santiago de Compostela Cathedral).
Left: The Calling of Saint James and John, shown in their fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee as Christ summons them to follow him. Right: The Martyrdom of Saint James, depicted kneeling before his executioner, while disciples plead for his body before King Herod. Both alabaster reliefs retain their original polychromy in vivid reds, blues, and golds.

On May 25, 1456, the records of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral note the appearance of an English pilgrim-priest: John Goodyear, rector of Chale on the Isle of Wight. At the high altar he offered a retable of wood, its alabaster figures painted in gold and blue, narrating the life of Saint James. The gift came not only as a personal act of devotion but as part of a much wider story: the surge of European pilgrimage in the fifteenth century, when Compostela was drawing tens of thousands of pilgrims from across the continent.

Goodyear’s offering was both precious and practical. Alabaster altarpieces from the Nottingham workshops were highly sought after across Europe. Lighter and easier to carve than marble, they could be shipped from English ports to Galicia or Portugal, where pilgrim traffic was at its height. For churches with modest means, or for private chapels, they provided affordable yet richly decorated devotional art.

The priest, however, knew the risks of such treasures disappearing. He made his donation conditional: the altarpiece could not be sold, pawned, or removed to another shrine, and it must always remain “within the body of the church.” The cathedral canons accepted these terms, and the work entered the treasury, later passing to the relics chapel and eventually to the museum.

Almost six centuries on, the Goodyear Altarpiece still survives. Its five panels—depicting the calling, mission, preaching, martyrdom, and translation of Saint James—embody both the artistry of medieval England and the deep ties that pilgrimage created across Christendom.

Two Souls in Awe of Venice

Two Chinese girls in Venice.

We came from far across the sea,
 With phones and dreams and time for tea,
 Each bridge, each boat, each golden dome,
 Feels like a story far from home!

 Oh, life is full of wonders, see —
 From gondolas to gelat-i!
 We click, we pose, we laugh, we cheer,
 Europe feels like magic here!

 The pigeons dance, the waiters smile,
 We’ve walked in style for half a mile,
 We tilt our heads, the photo’s right —
 Two wandering souls, what a sight!

 Oh, life is full of wonders, see —
 From bridges old to the wide blue sea!
 With selfie-sticks and joy so clear,
 Europe feels like magic here!

 So if you see us grin and spin,
 Just smile — and let the cameras in!

The Death of Thinking - How We Lost the Art of Being Wrong

Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE). Image based on the image at Wikimedia Commons: Σωκράτης, Ακαδημία Αθηνών (File name: Σωκράτης, Ακαδημία Αθηνών 6616) — used under public domain.

The Age of Answers

Socrates once said, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” That single truth — that wisdom begins with doubt — was the spark that ignited Western thought. His method was dialogue: a dance between thesis and antithesis, question and counter-question, until illusion gave way to insight.

Today, that art has vanished. We have traded dialogue for monologue, reflection for reaction. Every answer is a click away, but every question grows shallower. Daniel Kahneman called it “System 1 thinking” — fast, emotional, automatic. Critical thought lives in “System 2,” where effort, patience, and logic reside. Yet we rarely go there anymore. We no longer test our ideas against others; we just search for confirmation and call it truth.

The Echo Chamber and the Noise

Technology has built new temples — echo chambers where our own opinions are worshipped back to us. Algorithms reward agreement and punish doubt. The old Socratic circle of challenge and counter-challenge has been replaced by the digital loop of “like” and “share.” We no longer debate; we declare. Each tribe speaks only to itself, mistaking volume for validity.

Meanwhile, the media’s noise drowns out nuance. Headlines scream, outrage sells, and exaggeration is the new language of attention. In a world permanently on edge, careful reasoning feels too slow. When every issue is dressed as an emergency, genuine discussion cannot survive. We scroll, react, and move on — our minds trained for speed, not depth.

The Way Back

If we are to recover the lost art of thinking, we must also recover the lost art of dialogue. Not the staged shouting of talk shows, but the genuine exchange where ideas collide — thesis meeting antithesis — and something new, a synthesis, is born. That is how truth advances: not by silencing opposition, but by engaging it.

Curiosity is the first step. Ask why — and ask again. Listen to the answer, then ask what might contradict it. Reflection is the second step: slow down, verify, and think before reacting. And finally, education must once again teach argument as an act of respect, not aggression — the courage to challenge without hatred, to doubt without despair.

If leaders, teachers, and citizens could model that humility — the willingness to be proven wrong — we might yet revive the conversation that Socrates began: the endless dialogue between ignorance and understanding.

Further Reading

  • Daniel Kahneman – Thinking, Fast and Slow

  • Hannah Arendt – The Life of the Mind

  • Neil Postman – Amusing Ourselves to Death

  • Carl Sagan – The Demon-Haunted World

  • Immanuel Kant – What Is Enlightenment?

  • Friedrich Nietzsche – Twilight of the Idols

  • Jürgen Habermas – The Theory of Communicative Action

Russia, The Eternal Return of Suppression: The Fall of the Soviet Union

Mikhael Gorbachev, and his Glasnost and Perestroika.

By the early 1980s, the Soviet Union was a superpower in name but ailing in reality. Its economy was stagnant, its leadership geriatric, and its people weary of shortages and repression. Then came a man who promised change: Mikhail Gorbachev.

Glasnost and Perestroika
Gorbachev, taking power in 1985, sought to reform the system with perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (openness). Censorship was eased; criticism of the government became possible. State enterprises gained more autonomy, and limited private business was allowed. But these reforms also exposed decades of corruption and inefficiency.

Nationalism Resurges
With glasnost came a flood of suppressed history: the Stalinist purges, the secret Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and the scale of wartime losses. In the Baltic states, Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere, nationalist movements gained momentum. The USSR’s empire in Eastern Europe collapsed almost overnight in 1989, as one communist regime after another fell — first in Poland, then Hungary, East Germany, and beyond.

The Coup and the Collapse
In August 1991, hardline communists staged a coup against Gorbachev. Crowds in Moscow, led by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, resisted, and the coup failed. But the attempt fatally weakened the central government. By December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus declared the USSR dissolved. On December 25, 1991, the Soviet flag came down over the Kremlin for the last time.

The Legacy
The USSR’s collapse ended the Cold War but left behind 15 independent states, a shattered economy, and unresolved questions about identity and power — questions that still reverberate today.

Further Reading:

  • Serhii Plokhy – The Last Empire (2014)

  • Vladislav Zubok – Collapse (2021)

  • Archie Brown – The Gorbachev Factor (1996)

  • Stephen Kotkin – Armageddon Averted (2001)

The Pieterpad: A Journey Through the Heart of the Netherlands

A group of friends hiking on the Pieterpad near Roermond.

Imagine standing in Pieterburen in northern Groningen on a crisp morning in northern Groningen, looking out over flat polders, salt air on your skin, and maybe a seal in the distance. Somehow, this quiet shore is the beginning of something grand: roughly 500 kilometres of trail winding south through woods, heathland, rivers, villages—finally ending at Sint-Pietersberg, just south of Maastricht. This is the Pieterpad, the most famous long-distance walking route in the Netherlands.

A Bit of History

  • The idea was born in the late 1970s, when two Dutch women—Toos Goorhuis-Tjalsma from Tilburg in the south, and Bertje Jens from Groningen in the north—grew frustrated by the lack of long-distance walking paths in their homeland.

  • From about 1978 to 1983 they explored, plotted, tested stages, connecting existing paths, picking landscapes that showed off the diversity of the land.

  • The route was officially opened in 1983. Since then it has slowly evolved: slight adjustments of stages, small detours when infrastructure shifts, and improvements to signage and accommodation.

What You’ll See & How It Feels

Walking the Pieterpad is rarely rugged or remote—it’s not about trail-blazing, but about experiencing the changing Dutch landscape up close. Northern flatness gives you wide skies and polders; heathlands and woodlands in the centre; then gentle hills, river valleys, even vineyards, in Limburg. You pass through small towns and villages where time seems slower, where B&Bs, farmhouses and local cafes offer rest and character.

The trail is marked well (with the white-red markers of Dutch long-distance walking paths), and is divided into 26 stages of approx. 15-25 km each, so it’s accessible even if you can’t walk nonstop.

Estimating how many people walk the Pieterpad each year is tricky, because many people do just part of it, or break it up over many trips, and there's no central registry of walkers. But here are the best figures we have:

  • Some 30,000-50,000 people annually walk one or more of the 26 stages.

  • With the COVID-19 pandemic, interest and usage spiked: guidebook sales doubled, and people booking lodging on popular stages reported full occupancy more often.

So, safe to say: tens of thousands of people walk parts of or the whole Pieterpad every year.

The Pieterpad is more than a trail—it’s a mirror of the Netherlands. It shows you its history, its many landscapes, its rhythms. It brings people out into nature, connects rural to urban, past to present. After 40+ years, it continues to grow in popularity—not just among older walkers, but among younger people, couples, families, foreign hikers—especially once people discovered how beautiful and varied “Dutch wilderness” can be.

For More Information

The Holy Blood of Bruges

The procession in Bruges’ medieval streets during the annual Heilig Bloedprocessie, with the Belfry in the background.

Each spring, on Ascension Day, Bruges transforms into a living pageant of faith and memory. The Heilig Bloedprocessie—the Procession of the Holy Blood—winds through the medieval streets of this Belgian city with a splendor that has mesmerized pilgrims and travelers for centuries. Cloaked in music, incense, and the glint of sunlight on gilded relics, it is one of Europe’s oldest and most dramatic religious processions.

A Relic with a Long Journey

At the heart of the celebration is a crystal vial said to contain a few drops of Christ’s blood, preserved in solidified form. According to tradition, the relic was brought from the Holy Land to Bruges in the mid-12th century by Thierry of Alsace, Count of Flanders, returning from the Second Crusade. Whether by legend or miracle, the story fired medieval imaginations and turned Bruges into a center of devotion. The relic is housed in the Basilica of the Holy Blood, a Romanesque-Gothic gem on the Burg square.

A Procession Through Time

The earliest written record of the procession dates back to 1303, and for over seven hundred years it has taken place almost without interruption—through wars, revolutions, and changing eras of belief. What began as a solemn display of piety gradually expanded into a vast civic spectacle. Guilds, religious fraternities, and citizens joined in, carrying banners, portraying biblical scenes, and reenacting the arrival of the relic in Bruges.

Today, more than 1,700 participants in rich medieval costume retrace these layers of history. They process alongside the reliquary itself, which is borne aloft under a canopy of silk and gold. Brass bands and choirs fill the air with ancient hymns, while children scatter petals on the cobblestones.

A Living Heritage

For Bruges, the Heilig Bloedprocessie is more than a pageant; it is a living bond between city and past. The procession has been recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, underscoring its enduring spiritual and cultural significance.

Whether one comes as a believer, a lover of history, or simply a curious traveler, witnessing the Heilig Bloedprocessie is like stepping into a medieval painting suddenly alive—where faith and folklore, devotion and community pride, continue their slow, timeless walk through the heart of Bruges.

The relic of the Holy Blood shown by a priest, Bruges (Belgium).

Without Knowing, on the Camino

Each morning he walks the same stretch of the Meuse — unaware that he follows the ancient route of pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela.

Every morning, as the mist still clings to the Meuse, people set out from Roermond for their daily walk. Some follow the dike for exercise, others to clear their minds — yet without knowing, their footsteps trace one of Europe’s oldest pilgrim routes.

The Camino de Santiago passes quietly here, unmarked by fanfare or faith, just a worn rhythm between river and sky. The man in the photo has walked this path for years, greeting the same geese, watching the same current. He may never carry a scallop shell or reach Santiago, but his devotion to the road is its own kind of pilgrimage.

Burgos' Dancing Giants: The Gigantillos

The Gigantillos of Burgos.

Close to Plaza de España you’ll meet them mid-step: a bronze couple frozen in a festival beat. The man—wide-brimmed hat, long brown cape, staff of office—leans forward as if to lead. The woman—headscarf, earrings, skirt swirling—answers with a half-bow that might become a spin. This is Los Gigantillos, the city’s beloved “little giants,” cast in bronze by Teodoro Antonio Ruiz and set beside the Church of San Lesmes in 2010.

They don’t just decorate a sidewalk; they guard a story. The Gigantillos are the human-scale cousins of Spain’s towering festival giants. In Burgos they come alive to the sharp call of the dulzaina and the heartbeat of the drum, dancing through Corpus Christi, Curpillos, San Lesmes, and the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Where they pass, children copy their steps, grandparents clap in time, and the street remembers its own choreography.

The tradition is older than the pavement beneath your feet. Versions of these figures paraded here as early as the sixteenth century; in 1899 the modern pair took shape. A disastrous fire in 1973 forced the city to start again—proof that folklore isn’t fragile when a community chooses to carry it. The bronze couple arrived in our century to mark the centenary of the local savings bank, anchoring the living dance in metal so you can meet them even out of season.

Look closely and you’ll see the city inscribed in details: the mayoral staff in his hand, a civic symbol disguised as stage prop; the cape catching imaginary wind; the tilt of her shoulders that suggests music you can’t quite hear. Take a photo if you like, but better—stand a minute. Imagine the dulzaina cutting the morning air, the drum finding your ribs, and the Gigantillos stepping forward, as they always have, to lead Burgos into its next celebration.

Mores and Christians Festival in Bocairent (Spain)

Early in February, Bocairent bursts at the seams in honour of its patron saint, San Blas (Sant Blai). For six vivid days, fireworks crackle, pasodobles and comparsa music swell, parades roll, processions wind, and gunpowder booms through the streets. Everyone with a tie to Bocairent comes home—students, emigrants, cousins, the old guilds and new cofradías—crowding balconies, drumming in doorways, marching beside standards stitched by their mothers. At the castle, captains parley and boast before the mock assault, the old rivalry reborn in pageantry. By night, lanterns and drums fold the town into a pulsing heart; by day, Sant Blai crosses streets. Half theatre, half memory—history retold on foot to the rhythm of trumpets and gunfire—leaving your ears ringing.

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