Citadel of Liège

En un regard

Le château en bref

The Citadel of Liège, on the Sainte-Walburge hill more than a hundred metres above the Meuse valley, was the city's principal fortification. It originated in a fortified gate built in 1255 by the Prince-Bishop Henry of Guelders. A pentagonal masonry fortress, built between 1663 and 1671 under Maximilian Henry of Bavaria, was dismantled several times by the French, then condemned to demolition at the end of the 17th century and again in 1715, before being rebuilt under Dutch rule in 1816–1817. The Walloon heritage inventory describes brick ramparts and bastions with limestone quoins dating from this reconstruction. Decommissioned in 1891 after the construction of the ring of forts, the citadel served as a barracks, a command post and then a place of detention during the German occupation. The Enclos des Fusillés, laid out after the Second World War, commemorates the resistance fighters executed on the site and was recognised as a national necropolis in 2021. From 1967, the construction of the CHR de la Citadelle hospital removed a large part of the structure. Sections of the enclosure walls, bastions and the Puits de la Païenporte, listed between 1977 and 1988, remain at the heart of a public park.