Saturday, April 18, 2009

Brussles

On our last day in Belgium we went to Brussles.  This cute town is very well known for the statue of the peeing boy.  Why?  I don't really know.  There are many different legends told of why this statue is important.  He is believed to be nothing more than a decoration on top of a fountain, where people in the Middle-Ages came to get fresh water. Already in the 15th century a fountain called 'manneken-pis' existed in the Stoofstraat/Rue de l'étuve. The official origin can be traced back to the 13th of August 1619when the city ordered the sculptor Jerome Duquesnoy to make a new bronze statue of manneken-pis to replace an old and withered one. During the course of the centuries our little manneken has often been hidden to protect him against bombs of invading armies. He has also been stolen several times by plundering soldiers and even by the citizens of Geraardsbergen, a city in Flanders that claims to possess the oldest statue of a peeing boy in Belgium.




We ate on this cute little street which was full of restaurants, one right after another.

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