" It was a delicate task, too, for the danger was twofold: on the one hand not to restore would mean losing precious vestiges which are a town's armorial bearings, the past ennobling the present; on the other hand there was the danger of restoring too much, rejuvenating, replacing stone with stone to the point where the house or the monument had lost everything of its survival through the centuries, was nothing but a sham, a deceiving copy, the wax mask of a mummy, substituted instead of its authentic face moulded by the centuries. "

― Georges Rodenbach , Bruges-La-Morte