Bruges emerges as northern Europe's financial center

1384

The Flemish city's bourse - named for the Van der Beurse family's inn where merchants gathered - formalized commodity trading and money-changing into something resembling a modern exchange. Italian bankers, Hanseatic traders, and Iberian wool merchants converged on Bruges, making it the clearing house of Atlantic and Baltic commerce and the prototype for later financial centers at Antwerp and Amsterdam.