Dinant

The name Dinant comes from the Celtic Divo-Nanto, "sacred valley". The area was settled in Neolithic, Celtic and Roman times, and the town is first recorded in the 7th century, when Bishop Perpète moved his residence here. In the 11th century Emperor Henry IV gave the prince-bishops of Liège market and justice rights over Dinant, which became one of the principality's 23 "bonnes villes"; the first stone bridge over the Meuse dates from the end of that century. Wedged between cliff and river, the town grew in a long, thin strip along the bank.

Its wealth came from metal and stone. Medieval Dinant and its rival Bouvignes, across the river, cast silvery brass into candlesticks, aquamaniles and altar furniture for churches throughout the Meuse valley, so that such work is still called dinanderie; the cliffs supplied black marble and bluestone. An uprising during the Liège Wars ended in 1466, when Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and his son Charles the Bold punished the town and sacked it. Wars between France and Spain brought more destruction, the French occupied it in 1675, and in 1795 it passed to France with the rest of the prince-bishopric. Leather tanning and playing cards replaced brass, and the couque appeared.

On 15 August 1914 French and German troops fought for the town; among the French wounded was a young Lieutenant Charles de Gaulle. On 23 August German troops summarily executed 674 inhabitants, the largest German massacre of 1914, and burned the collegiate church. In May 1940 Rommel's 7th Panzer Division crossed the Meuse here. Today the municipality includes Anseremme, Bouvignes, Furfooz and other villages.

Dinant's most famous son is Adolphe Sax, born here in 1814, who invented the saxophone. A small museum in his house on the street that bears his name tells his story, and saxophone-shaped statues stand around the town. The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne wrote his doctoral thesis on medieval Dinant, and its brass tradition gave its name to dinanderie.

Legend is never far away. The split pinnacle of the Rocher Bayard is said to have been cleft by the hoof of Bayard, the giant horse that carried the four sons of Aymon in their flight from Charlemagne through the Ardennes in the 12th-century chanson de geste Les Quatre Fils Aymon. In reality the soldiers of Louis XIV cut it to make way for a road beside the river.

Memory of the war runs deep. The town received the Croix de Guerre in 1919, and a national monument to Belgium's civilian victims of 1914 was unveiled on the Place d'Armes in 1936 and destroyed by German troops in 1940. The abbey of Leffe, inhabited since 1152, gave its name to one of Belgium's best-known beers, and the town has been twinned with Disneyland Paris since 2012.

Dinant had 13,412 inhabitants on 1 January 2026, spread across the town and the villages of the municipality, from Anseremme and Bouvignes on the river to Furfooz, Sorinnes and Thynes on the plateau. French is the everyday language. Farming matters in the surrounding area, and the limestone cliffs long supported quarrying.

Tourism shapes the riverside. Day visitors come from Brussels, Namur and Liège to see the church and citadel, take a boat on the Meuse or paddle on the Lesse, and the town's choice of beds is limited, so many visitors do not stay the night. Healthcare is a major employer: Dinant has two sites of the CHU UCLouvain Namur university hospital, the largest employer in the province.

The rhythm is that of a small valley town. Hourly trains run to Brussels, and the riverside road carries traffic along the narrow strip between cliff and water. Agriculture and tourism are the main sources of income in Anseremme, as in much of the surrounding area.

The couque de Dinant is the town's emblem: a honey-sweetened biscuit pressed into a carved wooden mould before baking, said to be the hardest biscuit in Europe and usually eaten with coffee or hot chocolate. The biscuit first appeared when the town's brassware had fallen out of fashion. The flamiche dinantaise is the local version of a quiche, made with a cheese called boulette de Romedenne.

The Meuse valley also features in the story of fries. The Belgian journalist Jo Gérard claimed that a family manuscript of 1781 recounts potatoes being deep-fried in the valley before 1680, as a substitute for fried fish when the rivers froze. Fries are now sold in friteries, traditionally in a white cardboard cone wrapped in paper, with a spoonful of sauce on top.

Beer is part of the town's identity. Leffe, now a brand of abbey beers brewed in large quantities by AB InBev and no longer made in Dinant, takes its name from the town's abbey, and Maison Leffe tells its story and ends with a tasting. Around the town, the Ardennes supply jambon d'Ardenne, smoked ham and game pâté, and restaurants line the river.