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Our story

One fire, many hearths.

Warmth, water, air and power. From house to home.

Beurze brings together two European stories: the elements that turn a house into a home, and the Bruges house whose name became Europe’s word for an exchange.

Every home begins with a fire.

In ancient Greece, the hearth belonged to Hestia. Every home had one, and every city kept a common hearth whose fire never went out. There the city welcomed its guests, from foreign envoys to citizens who had served it well. When settlers sailed off to found a new city, they took fire from that hearth to light their own. However far they went, they carried the same flame.

Fire and water make a home.

The Romans knew a home needs more than fire. On her wedding day, a Roman bride touched fire and water as she began her new household. Rome’s way of banishing someone was the reverse: the exile was forbidden fire and water, and so shut out from every home. For the Romans, every household began with fire and water.

The elements of a home

Greek philosophers built the world from four elements: earth, water, air and fire. A house stands on the earth. A home needs the rest, and one more that the Greeks only glimpsed in a piece of amber.

Fire

Heating

Hestia’s hearth was the heart of every Greek home.

Water

Sanitary

Fire without water sustains nothing, wrote Plutarch.

Air

Ventilation

In the 5th century BC, the Greek medical text ‘On Airs, Waters, and Places’ tied health to the world around us.

Spark

Electricity

‘Electricity’ comes from elektron, Greek for amber, carried from the Baltic through Poland along the Amber Road.

Europe’s word for an exchange began in Bruges.

By 1285, the Van der Beurze family was running an inn in Bruges, under a coat of arms with three purses. Merchants from Venice, Genoa, Florence and far beyond gathered in the square before their house. Rivals from many nations traded there side by side. The square took the family’s name, and the name became a word. Across much of Europe, the place where traders meet still carries the name of a Flemish inn.

Today, Beurze brings it all together.

Walls and a roof make a house. Warmth, water, clean air and power make it a home: heating, sanitary, ventilation and electricity. That is what the installation trade brings into homes across Europe every day. Yet good products too often wait in the wrong warehouse while the right buyer is one border away. Beurze is the common hearth for wholesalers of every nation and language. It is neutral ground, where each partner keeps its own name and its own customers, and every partner’s hearth is lit from the same flame. Sellers see their stock move. Buyers find the right products at the right price. And every product helps turn a house into a home.

From Bruges to the world

  1. 1285
    Bruges
    The Van der Beurze family runs its inn
  2. 1322–1400s
    Bruges
    Venice, Genoa and Florence open their houses on the square
  3. 1495
    Bruges
    First written mention of the square as ‘De Beurs’
  4. 1531
    Antwerp
    The first building designed as an exchange opens
  5. 1571
    London
    The Royal Exchange opens, modelled on Antwerp
  6. 1611
    Amsterdam
    Amsterdam opens its exchange on the Antwerp model

One name, many languages

beurs · bourse · Börse · borsa · bolsa · bursă

In usum negotiatorum cuiuscumque nationis et linguae

For traders of every nation and language.

Motto of the Antwerp exchange, 1531

Beurze. One fire, many hearths.

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