Things to do
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Beffroi de Namur
A round tower of 1388, built as part of the city wall and turned into a belfry in 1746, which is the wrong way round for most of them and is why it looks like a keep. Unesco listed it in 1999 with the belfries of Belgium and France. It opens only for guided visits.
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Citadelle de Namur
Fortified from Roman times and rebuilt by the Dutch, the Spanish, Vauban and Coehoorn in turn until it covered eighty hectares, which is why it was called a termite mound. Seven kilometres of underground galleries can be walked with a guide. A cable car reopened in 2021 and climbs from the river in four minutes.
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Cathédrale Saint-Aubain
The only cathedral in Belgium built in a late classical manner, finished in 1772 to an Italian architect's design, with a dome over the crossing and a cool grey interior of pilasters and light. The heart of Don John of Austria is kept here. Its bell tower is the Romanesque survivor of the church it replaced.
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Musée des Arts anciens du Namurois
Mosan art from the Meuse valley, the metalwork and enamel that this region produced between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, in a Renaissance townhouse. The treasury of Oignies is shown here: portable altars and reliquaries by a lay brother, Hugo, working around 1230 and counted among the great goldsmiths.
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Musée Félicien Rops
The largest collection of the Namur-born artist who illustrated Baudelaire and spent a career on erotic and satanic subjects that were prosecuted in his lifetime. Prints, drawings and the plates he worked from fill an eighteenth-century house on a narrow street. Warnings at the door are there for good reason.
