Namur; Saturday, 21 February, 2026

I had an early breakfast as the hotel had signs up in the lifts stating that breakfast was very busy after 9am at weekends, not that it made much difference as problems with the power supply to the kitchens and restaurant meant that it was cold food only, so the breakfast wasn’t being well patronised.

Slightly sated I headed out into the dull drizzle which was predicted to continue for much of the day and started by wandering up the bank of the Meuse river that the hotel was on the side of until I reached the point where the Sambre river merged in. This was the original birthplace of the city that is today Namur, though almost nothing from that original Roman settlement survives, though the view up to the Citadelle sitting on the hill that lies between the two rivers are pretty spectacular.

From the confluence point I wandered up the left bank of the Sambre a short distance until I reached the Cable Car station to pick up the quick, and least exhausting, route up to the citadelle, and a few minutes later I was soaring high above the river and fortifications on my way past most of the citadelle complex to the Esplanade at the top part of the site. When the fortress was demilitarised in the 19th century and turned over for leisure this was the first part of the site to be developed with the creation of a theatre, stadium and a faux chateau that houses a restaurant.

I only had a brief wander around this part of the site as I needed to head down into the Citadelle itself to join the tour that I had booked onto to explore the tunnels and passageways underneath the site. There are over 4km of underground paths tunnelled through the site, but the tour I was going on would only cover about ½ a kilometre in the 90 minutes it took, but during that time it was possible to see parts of the fortifications from several periods of history, in particular the Spanish, Austrian, Dutch and French periods of occupation of the site. During it’s history the Citadelle changed hands 22 times, which would suggest it wasn’t quite as well designed as it looks.

After the tour of the underground passages I headed back up to the exhibition space where the tour had started from to look around the exhibition on the history of both the site and the city, starting from the very very pre-history of how the land that is today the Sambre/Meuse confluence was formed, through the prehistoric, the arrival of the Romans and the various owners of the lands that are today Wallonia through to the modern day.

Also included in my ticket for the tour and the museum was a ride on the petit-train that runs around the main outline of the Citadelle site, allowing you to see all of the key parts of the fortifications, with some commentary (in French, Dutch and English) to get a better understanding of the phases of construction of the site and it’s changing role over time.

With the land train tour completed I then spent another couple of hours exploring the citadelle slowly making my way down through the different layers of the complex before finally reaching the bottom of the hill by the confluence point of the two rivers. From there I had a wander into the centre of the city to explore more of the city centre that I’d wandered round the previous evening, this time in the daylight – albeit dwindling by the end.

After spending some time looking around the city I was feeling a bit peckish so I headed over towards a small frites shop that I’d spotted a little while earlier, just intending on getting a small portion of chips to tied me over for a while, because when in Belgium you have to have the frites. It turned out the locals idea of a small portion was a main meal and for the cost of a cone of chips and a bottle of water I felt I’d had more than enough food to see me through to breakfast the following day.

From the centre of the city I crossed over the Meuse river to follow the bank on the opposite side back up stream a bit to take in some views of the Citadelle from across the water, though by now a particularly unpleasant heavy drizzle was making wandering around less than ideal, so with some photos of the Citadelle at night taken I headed back towards the hotel to dry off and to take the weight off my feet from a long days walking.