Huy

Huy sits where the Hoyoux joins the Meuse under a rock that has carried a fortress since the medieval period, though the present citadel is a Dutch construction of the 1820s, a heavy barrack fort now holding a museum. A cable car runs up to it from the riverbank. Below, the collegiate church of Notre-Dame is a fourteenth-century Gothic building with a large rose window known locally as the Rondia, about nine metres across, and a treasury holding Mosan metalwork including four twelfth-century reliquary shrines of the first rank. The town square has a baroque fountain of 1406, rebuilt later, and a network of narrow streets behind. The Meuse valley cycle route runs through.

History

The first village grew around a Roman fort on the right bank of the Meuse, Saint Domitian, bishop of Tongeren, preached here in the 6th century, and the town is first named, as Hoius vicus after the Hoyoux, in a 7th-century testament. In the early Middle Ages it was one of the richest towns on the Meuse, living on metalwork, tanning, woodwork and wine, and after a spell as a county it joined the Prince-Bishopric of Liège for more than eight centuries; in 1066 it received the first known town charter north of the Alps, and Peter the Hermit is said to have stirred its people to join the First Crusade. Cloth brought a boom in the 13th and 14th centuries, and every seven years a procession recalls the end of a drought in 1656 (Wikipedia, Huy).

The main sights

• The Rondia rose window - a nine-metre wheel in the collegiate church.
• Mosan reliquary shrines - twelfth-century metalwork in the treasury.
• The citadel above the town - a Dutch barrack fort of the 1820s.
• The cable car - running up the rock from the riverbank.

When to go

April to October; the fort and cable car are seasonal. Half a day. The treasury has limited hours. The Meuse cycle route makes the town an easy stop between Namur and Liege.

Good to know

The citadel is a nineteenth-century barracks rather than a medieval castle and the museum inside is heavy going. The cable car runs seasonally and closes in wind. The treasury opening is narrow. The town is otherwise ordinary.

Nearby

Modave Castle is south; Liege lies east on the Meuse.

Key facts