Some literary connections are invented after the fact because two things happen to look good beside each other. This is not one of them.
At the Adornes Estate in Bruges, a real fifteenth-century family planned a shared collection of books, transformed one of the city's strangest religious complexes, travelled between Bruges, Jerusalem and Scotland and later walked into Dorothy Dunnett's fictional world almost by name.
If you are reading The House of Niccolò, this may be the most satisfying historical detour in the city.
You can visit the Adornes Estate and Jerusalem Chapel as part of our literary weekend in Bruges.
The 1452 plan: books in Latin and Flemish for shared use
In 1452, Pieter II Adornes and his wife Elisabeth Bradericx wrote an unusual instruction into their testament.
Their books were to remain together in the Jerusalem Chapel rather than being dispersed through inheritance or sale. The plan distinguished between books in Latin and books in Flemish, placing them on separate lecterns so people could benefit from them.
That detail is easy to romanticise, so precision matters. The idea can reasonably be described as a remarkably early shared reading space, and the Estate itself has characterised it as a kind of public library. But surviving evidence suggests the ambitious project was not fully realised in the form imagined in 1452. Records point instead to a smaller collection, including a later donation of Latin religious works.
The unfinished reality does not make the idea less interesting. A fifteenth-century Bruges couple deliberately imagined books staying together and being available beyond the immediate act of inheritance.
The presence of Flemish matters too. Rather than forcing medieval Bruges into a simple hierarchy of “high” and “low” languages, it is more revealing to see vernacular books as widening the possible readership beyond people able to read Latin. Bruges was multilingual, and Latin, Dutch and French served different functions and audiences.
Then comes their son Anselm Adorne
Pieter II and Elisabeth's son Anselm Adorne (1424–1483) is one of those historical people who makes fictional characters look under-travelled.
He was a merchant and diplomat in the Burgundian world, maintained strong connections with Scotland, travelled widely and made a major pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1470 with his son Jan. He was knighted by James III of Scotland.
During Anselm's lifetime, the family estate acquired much of the form that makes it so distinctive today. The older chapel was replaced by the Jerusalem Chapel inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the family residence was enlarged and the almshouses formed part of the growing complex.
That mixture of commerce, diplomacy, religion and international movement is precisely why Anselm feels so at home in Dorothy Dunnett's fifteenth century.
Anselm Adorne in The House of Niccolò
The protagonist of The House of Niccolò is Nicholas vander Poele, who begins Niccolò Rising in Bruges in 1460 as an apprentice in a dye-yard.
One correction matters here: Nicholas is not Anselm Adorne's formal apprentice. Their relationship is more interesting than that shorthand anyway. Dunnett brings the historical Adorne into Nicholas's world as a recurring older merchant and political figure whose path intersects with his rise.
The connection is not a passing name dropped for local colour. It has weight within the series and, by Gemini, the final volume, Anselm is among the people who have influenced Nicholas's life.
The Dorothy Dunnett Society has even collaborated with the Adornes Estate on a lecture devoted to Anselm's place in the Niccolò series.
So when you walk through the estate after reading Dunnett, you are not visiting a generic medieval house that happens to resemble the novels. You are entering the surviving world of a real person Dunnett actually used.
The Scottish connection is not decoration
The name Scottish Lounge can sound like a modern visitor-centre flourish until you know Anselm's story.
The Adornes maintained genuine links with Scotland, and Anselm's relationship with the country included diplomacy and his knighthood by James III. The lounge visited today celebrates that family history.
It works as an honesty lounge. You can take tea, coffee or another drink, choose a book from the shelf and sit down. The Estate shop also carries books connected with Bruges and the Middle Ages.
The continuity is already good enough without embellishment: the same estate where a family imagined shared books in 1452 now invites visitors to pick one from a shelf and read in a room tied to the family's real Scottish story.
Where Yoko Tsuno unexpectedly enters the picture
There is another literary layer at the same address.
Roger Leloup's Yoko Tsuno 20: L'Astrologue de Bruges uses Bruges and the Jerusalem Chapel within a story that moves between 1994 and the sixteenth century, mixing time travel with plague, the Inquisition and science fiction.
That makes the Adornes Estate unusually dense literary territory: a documented fifteenth-century family, an unrealised library plan, a real historical figure inside Dunnett's fiction and a chapel that later enters the visual world of a Belgian comic.
Why this is worth a separate visit
You do not need to know any of this to enjoy the Jerusalem Chapel. But if books are part of the reason you travel, the layers make the place much harder to forget.
Pieter II and Elisabeth give you the idea of books kept for shared benefit. Anselm turns the estate outward toward diplomacy, pilgrimage and Scotland. Dunnett puts him back into motion in a fictional Europe of merchants and calculation. Leloup makes the chapel a visual bridge to another century. The Scottish Lounge lets the story end quietly, with a book in your hands.
For the other novels, comics and companion reads connected with the city, continue with books set in Bruges. For the slower practical route, see our bookshops and places to read in Bruges.