La Cité Ardente (The Ardent City) — where the inventor of the saxophone was born in a small house on Rue Adolphe Sax, Georges Simenon created Inspector Maigret while remembering the working-class streets of his childhood, the Sunday morning market at La Batte is the longest outdoor market in Belgium, and the ornate Christmas village has been the most theatrical in Europe for decades
Liège (200,000; metro 600,000) is the largest city of the Ardennes-Meuse region and the capital of Wallonia's industrial heartland — a working city with a strong identity, known for its gastronomy (the Liège waffle with pearl sugar, the boudin liégeois, the Peket gin), its market culture, and its ferociously partisan football supporters. The city straddles the Meuse River where it meets the Ourthe and the Vesdre. Adolphe Sax (1814–1894), inventor of the saxophone, was born in Dinant but grew up and trained in Liège, where his father's instrument-making workshop gave him the mechanical educati…
Liège was the capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (980–1795), an ecclesiastical principality independent of both France and the Austrian Netherlands — the Prince-Bishops who ruled it were elected by the cathedral chapter rather than appointed by secular rulers, producing a tradition of civic independence that made Liège the site of one of the earliest popular uprisings in medieval Europe (the Perron uprising of 1465). Georges Simenon (1903–1989), born in Liège's Outremeuse district, created Inspector Jules Maigret from memories of the Liège police prefect he observed as a child journalis…