AT A GLANCE

Why go?

On a quiet passage between two of Bruges' museums, four lean bronze riders wait in a stone semicircle. This is The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (De Vier Ruiters van de Apocalyps), an expressive sculpture group by the Belgian artist Rik Poot, set in the walled former garden called Hof Arents beside the Dijver canal and the photogenic Boniface Bridge. Free to view at any hour, it turns a shortcut between the Gruuthuse and Groeninge museums into one of the city's most arresting outdoor stops.↗↗↗

Though small in scale, the figures are surprisingly powerful: Poot cast them himself in thin bronze, almost pierced through in places, so the horses and riders look gaunt and tense rather than monumental. Each carries the traditional attribute that names it—Revolution with a bow, War with a raised sword, Famine with a pair of grain scales, and Death with empty eye sockets and a hollow face.↗↗