Low Countries: Notable Cities

Bruges (All Facts)

• By the 1400s, it became the richest commercial staging-post in Europe, having become a world city, prosperous not only in commerce but in the arts, in a new international culture and lifestyle

• Developed in the 1200s because of its geographical position between England, France, Italy and, the Rhineland states; it gave its merchants the chance to become landowners and members of the nobility

• English wool was delivered here so regularly that London ceased to be important to traders in the Hanseatic League

  • They brought timber, wheat, smoked fish, metals, and furs from Germany, Russia, and Sweden

  • They brought spices and oriental productions from Italy, either by sea or up the Rhine

• It exported tapestries, cloth, and material from Flanders, Brabant, and Hainault

• It became home to a factory built by the Hanseatic League, since when international commerce and banking expanded enormously

• The Teutonic Knights even opened a bank here

• Papal tithes from all over Europe were banked here

Ghent (All Facts)

Antwerp (All Facts)

• City which hosted a world commercial center

• By 1557, however, they faced a crisis as the Kingdoms of Spain and France found it impossible either to pay the interest on their debts or to repay any borrowed money to them

Brussels (All Facts)

Oudenaarde (All Facts)