The incunable collection includes woodcuts and engravings, e.g. in Colard Mansion's Metamorphoses and Hartmann Schedel's Liber chronicarum.
The special collections include works by artists like Willem Vrelant, the Master of Guillebert de Metz, the Master of the Tall Figures (Beaufort Group), Hieronymus and Antonius Wierix, and Michael Wolgemut.
[1] The public library of Bruges manages one of the most important collections of manuscripts, incunables and historical journals in Flanders.
The core of the collection stems from library of the former Cistercian abbeys of Ten Duinen (°Koksijde, 1128) and Ter Doest (°Lissewege, 1175).
In 1804 the city of Bruges was entrusted with the conservation and management of the collection of both abbeys after they were confiscated by French revolutionaries under the authority of Napoleon.
The library was later relocated to the Jan Van Eyck square in 1883 due to a lack of space in the City Hall.
70 illuminated Books of Hours from, among others, Flanders, the Netherlands and France, and medieval copies of urban chronicles, e.g. the Excellente kroniek van Vlaanderen.
The oldest preserved newspaper is the Nieuwe Tijdinghen, which appeared from 1637 until 1645 and was printed in Bruges by Nicolas Breyghel.
Besides many single issues, the collection of the Public Library contains 64 titles and more than half a million pages, most of which can be consulted online.