Namur is the laid-back capital of French-speaking Belgium. Perched at the confluence of two rivers, the Meuse and the Sambre, and crowned by one of the largest citadels in Europe, it's a city on a human scale that combines its role as Wallonia's political capital with a relaxed atmosphere of tree-lined quays, waterside terraces and charming streets. It's the gateway to the Ardennes and a perfect getaway for discovering southern Belgium far from the crowds of Bruges or Brussels.
Its star attraction is the citadel, an impressive fortress occupying the rocky spur between the two rivers, which for centuries was one of the most fought-over strongholds on the continent, so much so that it was called 'the anthill of Europe' because of the number of times it was besieged. Today you can get up to it on foot, by cable car or by little train, and from its ramparts a magnificent view unfolds over the city, the rivers and the valleys. Down below, the old town offers baroque churches, museums, the famous belfry and tasty, unpretentious Walloon cuisine.
This guide explores Namur with a practical, warm eye: how to get up to the citadel and what to see there, the old town and its museums, the confluence of the rivers and the Grognon viewpoint, how to get there from Brussels and how to use Namur as a base for exploring the Ardennes and nearby Dinant. Whether you come for a day or stay for several, Namur wins you over with its unhurried pace, its rivers and its character as a small, welcoming capital.
Namur was born in a strategic spot: the rocky spur where the Sambre flows into the Meuse, already occupied in Celtic and Roman times. In the Middle Ages it was the seat of a county, and its fortress grew to become one of the most coveted strongholds in Europe, fought over by the Spanish, French, Dutch and Austrians, and besieged again and again (Vauban fortified it for Louis XIV; William III of Orange retook it). Its status as a military key between powers earned it the nickname 'the anthill of Europe'. In 1914 and 1940 it was once again the scene of fighting. Since 1986 it has been the capital of Wallonia. All of this, from the Romans to today, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓French-speaking Belgium in the south: the old prince-bishopric of Liège, Merovingian Tournai, fortified Namur, the forests of the Ardennes and the industrial heartland of coal and steel, cradle of Walloon folklore and of Adolphe Sax.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
There are places whose history is written in their geography, and Namur is one of them. It all starts at the Grognon, the rocky spur that rises just where the river Sambre hands its waters over to the Meuse. It is a site nature seems to have designed to be defended: surrounded by water on two sides, commanding a junction of waterways that were highways of trade and of armies from the remotest times. It is no surprise that the first settlers moved in there.
Excavations have revealed occupation since prehistory, and in the time of Celtic Gaul there was a settlement here of the Aduatuci or of neighbouring tribes. With the Roman conquest, the place —Namurcum— became a crossing and control point on the Meuse, within the network of roads and river routes that held Gallia Belgica together. The meeting of the rivers made Namur a natural hub of communications between north and south, towards the Rhine and towards the interior of Gaul.
After the fall of the Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions, the region became part of the Frankish world. The old site on the rock was not abandoned: on the contrary, its strategic value was only going to grow. In the dark centuries of the Early Middle Ages, on that spur between the Sambre and the Meuse, the fortress that would shape the town's fate for ever began to take form.
From the tenth century, Namur became the seat of a county. The counts of Namur ruled a territory straddling the great powers of the region —the duchy of Brabant, the prince-bishopric of Liège, the county of Hainaut— and made their fortress on the rock the centre of their power. The counts' castle, the first core of the future citadel, dominated a town growing at its feet, beside the rivers, living off river trade, craftwork and, in time, metalworking.
The county of Namur passed through different dynasties and, like so many territories in what are now the Netherlands and Belgium, ended up absorbed by the rising power of the dukes of Burgundy. In 1421 the count sold his rights to Philip the Good of Burgundy, and Namur thus entered the great set of Burgundian states that unified much of the Low Countries. From the Burgundians it would pass by inheritance to the House of Austria (the Habsburgs) and then to the Spanish branch of the family, becoming one of the provinces of the Spanish Netherlands.
Through these centuries the town was defined by its role as a stronghold. Namur was, above all, a key: whoever controlled it commanded the passage along the Meuse. That condition, which gave it importance, also condemned it to a fate of wars. In the centuries that followed, the fortress of Namur would be one of the most besieged in Europe.
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, Namur lived to the rhythm of the wars that ravaged the Low Countries. As a key position on the Meuse, its citadel was reinforced and enlarged again and again, and besieged by almost every army that fought for control of the region: Spanish, Dutch, French, Austrian. The most famous military engineers of the day left their mark on the rock. The town was bombarded, taken, retaken and refortified so many times that it earned an eloquent nickname: 'the anthill of Europe', for the endless coming and going of soldiers besieging it.
Two episodes sum up that period. In 1692, in the middle of the War of the League of Augsburg, the army of Louis XIV of France besieged and took Namur, and the king himself came to witness the triumph; the great engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban directed the works and then remodelled the fortifications according to his modern principles. Barely three years later, in 1695, William III of Orange —king of England and stadtholder of the United Provinces— retook the place from the French in another famous and bloody siege. Namur changed hands in step with the great European wars.
What remains of all that military effort is the impressive citadel that crowns the town today: not a single castle, but a palimpsest of fortifications from different periods and nations, layered over the rocky spur. When at last, in the nineteenth century, the fortress lost its military role, Namur could breathe for the first time in centuries without the weight of being a permanent battlefield. Or almost, because the twentieth century had two more wars in store for it.
After the end of the Napoleonic wars, Namur became part first of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and, from the revolution of 1830, of the new independent Belgium. The young Belgian state, aware of the strategic value of the position on the Meuse, turned it into one of its fortified points: at the end of the nineteenth century a belt of modern forts was built around the town, designed to defend the country from invasion.
That foresight was put to the test in August 1914. When the First World War broke out, the German army invaded neutral Belgium and attacked the strongholds blocking its way to France. Namur, like Liège, was besieged: its forts, pounded by German heavy artillery, fell within days, and the town was occupied. Although Belgian resistance was brief, it helped to slow the German advance in the first weeks of the war, precious time for the Allies.
In May 1940, with the German invasion of the Second World War, Namur was in the line of fire again. The Meuse region was once more a scene of fighting, and the town endured the hardships of occupation until its liberation in 1944. The two wars left scars and destruction, and many of the old forts of the defensive belt remain as silent witnesses to a violent century. But once the wars were over, a far more peaceful and honourable role awaited Namur.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Belgium was profoundly transformed. Tensions between the Dutch-speaking (Flanders) and French-speaking (Wallonia) communities led to a series of state reforms that turned the country into a federation, with regions and communities holding wide powers. On that new map, Wallonia —French-speaking Belgium in the south— needed a capital. And in 1986 Namur was chosen.
The decision made sense: Namur was a medium-sized city, central within Wallonia, with history and without the rivalries that bigger cities like Liège or Charleroi would have stirred up. Since then Namur has been home to the Parliament and the Government of Wallonia, installed in buildings beside the rivers, and it has seen its administrative, university and service role grow. The old stronghold, besieged so many times, became the political heart of French-speaking Belgium.
Today's Namur, with more than 110,000 inhabitants, combines that institutional weight with the feel of a quiet, pleasant city. Its citadel, demilitarised, is now a large cultural and tourist space crowned with viewpoints; its quays on the Meuse and the Sambre invite a stroll; its old town offers museums —such as the one devoted to the provocative local artist Félicien Rops or the one holding the exquisite Treasure of Hugo d'Oignies, a jewel of medieval Mosan metalwork— and tasty Walloon food. Every September the Fêtes de Wallonie fill the streets with music and folklore. From a frontier rock fought over by every army in Europe to the serene capital of Wallonia, Namur has finally found, after centuries of sieges, the peace it lacked.
