Liège (German: Lüttich, Dutch: Luik) is the biggest city in Wallonia, Belgium’s French-speaking region, and the capital of the province of the same name. It has been an important urban hub since the Middle Ages, but truly flowered during the industrial revolution, when it expanded to become Belgium’s third-largest city, behind Brussels and Antwerp. It is located at the foot of the Ardennes on the river Meuse. Liège, owing to its strategic location, retains its relative prosperity and economic prominence in comparison to its Wallonian counterparts farther south.
Despite its size and placement between several of Europe’s most visited cities, Liège receives relatively little visitor traffic. Those who stumble upon it in their schedule may be astonished to discover the ostensibly industrial city to be rather green, with broad boulevards, an interesting, if somewhat disordered, mix of architecture from various eras, plenty of vegetation, and lovely riverbanks and slopes. There are also several museums and other areas of interest, enough to keep you occupied for at least a day.
Since the early Middle Ages, Liège has been an important city. It served as the capital of the Principality of Liège, which remained an autonomous state until the French Revolution (around 1789). It was an early center of industrialism in the nineteenth century. It is now a huge city of 200,000 people, with a total population of 750,000 in its metropolitan region. The city has a significant Italian community, accounting for 5% of the population.
Liège’s central area is an intriguing blend of a historic town center (dotted with a few extremely brutalist buildings from the 1960s and 1970s), a rather elegant new town with wide boulevards, tall apartment buildings (some Art Deco), narrow streets with small businesses, a few pretty parks, and a few interesting shopping arcades. The suburbs of Liège are primarily divided into two separate sectors: big industrial complexes stretching along the river’s bank in the north and south (including the towns of Seraing and Herstal) and working-class communities in the east and west with mostly spare green neighborhoods for healthy people.
Liège is situated near the entrance of the Ardennes, therefore the scenery of the city’s south is significantly different from the rest of the city, with steep hills and dense woods (Sart-tilman and beyond).
- Tourist office (Office Du Tourisme De Liege), Féronstrée 92, +32 4 221 92 21. 9:00 am – 5:00 pm.
MAIN SIGHTS
- The Prince-Bishops of Liège’s 16th-century residence is located on the Place St Lambert, where the ancient St. Lambert’s Cathedral stood before the French Revolution. The Archeoforum, an archeological exhibit, may be found under Place St Lambert.
- The perron on the neighboring Place du Marché was formerly the Prince-emblem Bishopric’s of justice and is now the city’s symbol. It is located in front of the city hall, which was built in the 17th century.
- The current Liège Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Paul and has a treasury as well as Saint Lambert’s tomb. It is one of the seven ancient college churches, along with the German-Romanesque St Bartholomew’s Church (Saint Barthélémy) and the St Martin’s Church.
- The church of Saint-James (Saint-Jacques) is most likely Liège’s most magnificent medieval church. It is constructed in the Flamboyant-Gothic style, with an early Renaissance porch. Jean Del Cour, a sculptor from Liège, created the sculptures. Saint-Jacques also has 29 magnificent 14th century misericords.
- MAMAC (Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art), the Museum of Walloon Life, and the Museum of Walloon Art & Religious Art are the three major museums in Liège (Mosan art). The Grand Curtius Museum is a 17th-century chateau near the Meuse River that has collections of Egyptology, armament, archaeology, fine arts, religious art, and Mosan art.
- The historical city center (the Carré), the Hors-Château area, the Outremeuse area, the parks and boulevards along the River Meuse, the Citadel, the 374-step stairway “Montagne de Bueren” leading from Hors-Château to the Citadel, the ‘Médiacité’ shopping mall designed by Ron Arad Architects, and the Liège-Guillemins railway station designed by Santiago Calatrava are also worth seeing