Dinant Citadel

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View of part of the fortress wall

The Citadel of Dinant is a castle built on a high cliff by the Meuse , which was built under the Prince-Bishop of Liège , Théoduin . At the beginning of the 19th century it was extensively expanded as a fortress for defense and protection purposes. Its individual systems were reconstructed at the end of the 20th century and serve as a museum . Together with the citadels of Huy and Namur , the fortress of Dinant is part of the so-called Meuse Citadels .

location

Located in the center of the city of Dinant, the citadel offers an impressive view of the Belgian city ​​and the Meuse flowing through it . The height difference of around 100 meters is overcome by means of a cable car opened in 1956 . A staircase with 408 steps, which was carved into the rock in 1577, also connects the bank with the rock plateau. After the end of the Second World War, the city administration converted the fortress into a museum . However, some rooms were reserved for military use, in which there is a training facility for 400 Belgian cadets.

history

On the right side of the undated drawing you can see the castle or palace complex above the city.

In place of the fortress there was a castle built between 1041 and 1050, which was largely destroyed by Burgundian troops in the 15th century . In 1523 the inhabitants of Dinant began the reconstruction at the instigation of the Liège bishop. At the end of the 17th century, French units looted the facility again before they withdrew from the city. Due to the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, the city ​​and its surroundings fell to the Netherlands. As a result, the place was determined for a defense system. The Dutch erected solid thick walls on the river side and on the land side from 1818 to 1821. Inside, a cave system was created with individual rooms in which the occupiers lived and worked. A trench was also dug and a drawbridge was installed. In 1830 the entire facility was handed over to Belgian partisans without a fight. With the establishment of the Belgian state , Dinant and its fortress fell into its territory. The administration officially demilitarized the citadel in 1868 and auctioned it publicly. The fortress rooms were then used to store archaeological artifacts from the history of the city and the surrounding area.

During the First World War, Belgium was only a transit area for the imperial German troops on the march against France. Accused of partisan activities by Franctireurs , German divisions attacked Dinant in August 1914, killing nearly seven hundred civilians and hundreds of French occupiers and destroying around three quarters of all homes. The fortress, situated high above the Meuse, was conquered and occupied by the Germans, with around 70 members of the French and German armies dying. A war reporter who accompanied him recorded his impressions of the fortress and the collections that were already there in 1914 in several drawings.

It was different in World War II. In the attack fighting the German Wehrmacht against France reached the 7th Panzer Division of Erwin Rommel in 1940 the right east bank of the Meuse in Dinant. The defenders had previously blown up the large bridge at Notre Dame church on May 12, 1940 in order to prevent the river crossing. French units had holed up on the fortress and positioned heavy artillery in various places, which were used to fire after the arrival of the German troops. However, they then cleared the facility.

During the retreat movements of the German attackers in 1944, British and American planes bombed the fortress and the city, and part of the residential buildings burned down. A bomb hit near a bunker that had previously been relocated from the Yser to the fortress caused it to slide on one side on the slope and get into a rather inclined position, resulting in a complete incline of more than 20 degrees.

The fortress as a museum

General plan of the fortress museum
mortar

In front of the entrance to the courtyard of the facility are two historic mortars , the medieval-style paved courtyard shows some massive shooting machines in the middle, shops are built into the walls and on the opposite side there is an exhibition room of the Belgian unit stationed here with selected historical equipment .

In the various rooms, in addition to exhibits in direct connection with the fortress, scenes from the city's history are shown. You can see (selection):

  • The Great Gallery: a long corridor with loopholes on both sides through the at least two meter thick walls, in which cannons are also set up,
  • the powder chamber with three halls behind it, each dealing with a decisive event in the citadel (city siege, destruction of the castle under Louis XIV, battleground in the First World War); time tables are available for the visitors,
Wrought
  • three room cells in which a forge, a kitchen and a bakery from the early 19th century are reproduced, which were at the fortress,
  • A room on the history of the Maas Bridge: you can see the foundation piles of the very first wooden bridge, which was built over the river in 1080 by the monks of Maulsort. When the modern stone bridge was built in 1952, the workers found these foundation piles, which were placed in the fortress after being preserved. They are well preserved by being stored in the mud underwater. A bridge model has been made for this purpose.
  • a room with a 17th century carriage used by the Marquise de Maintenon on her visit to Dinant. The marquise was the secret wife of the "Sun King" Louis XIV.
  • Armory with cuirassier armor , sabers , bayonets , firearms,
  • a realistically designed command post from the First World War under a starry sky with trenches and fighting noises,
The bunker room is left.
  • the bunker room lying at an angle in the rock - only the vertically hanging lamps provide an orientation aid and every museum visitor fights against the tilt, which makes a crossing an impressive experience.

Finally, other rooms in the fortress are also used for temporary activities, including a sand sculpture exhibition in 2008.

literature

  • Michel Bourdeaux: Les 3 ages de la Citadelle; Notice historique et visite, Dinant (The three epochs of the citadel; historical note and visit); no year

Web links

Commons : Citadel of Dinant  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b The Citadel of Dinant on werbeka.com.
  2. ↑ a b c d e information on the fortress' visitor boards; As of April 2013.
  3. ^ Drawing by Richard Müller, August 1914 on the Dinant fortress
  4. ↑ History of the fortress on the Citadel homepage ( Memento from April 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Sculpture from the "Magic Sand" exhibition in the Dinant Citadel, 2008

Coordinates: 50 ° 15 ′ 42.3 "  N , 4 ° 54 ′ 48.2"  E