A stunning steel footbridge with a timber deck sweeps across the Meuse to connect Liège-Guillemins station with the Parc de la Boverie. Built in 2016, it is named La Belle Liégoise after a remarkable local woman.
Born Anne-Josèphe de Méricourt in an Ardennes village, she travelled to Paris in 1789 and played a leading role in the French Revolution, dressing as a man while calling for women’s rights.
‘Cast off our chains,’ she told a crowd in 1792. ‘It’s finally time for women to break out of the unjust prison in which men have confined us. Take up arms, it is our right by virtue of nature and the law. Let us show men that we are not inferior, neither in virtue, nor in courage. Let us show Europe that the French know their rights.’
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
