Prince-Bishops’ Palace, Liège
The History of Liège goes back to the neolithic period, but its consideration of villa was not produced until the end of the VII century. The city was very closed to the origins of Charlemagne, born near here according to various sources. However, its economic and social boom was produced with the appearance of the first of the princes bishops in the city.
History of the Prince-Bishop´s Palace
Notger was the first of them, in the year 930, and he was who ordered the development of the city and who consolidated it as one of the great real and religious bastions in northern Europe.
It was precisely under the government of Notger when, toward the year 1000, began to be built the Prince-bishop’s Palace, symbol of the monumental city and referent of the central square of Saint Lambert, where it is located.
Unfortunately, nothing has come to us from that first grand palace since a fire swept through it in the year 1185.
Its reconstruction would shortly after thanks to other of their rulers, also a prince-bishop, Raoul of Zahringen, but Liege, by its strategic situation, surrounded by big historical empires, has always counted with a history rich in wars of power and in great tragedies.
Again the palace was destroyed in the year 1468, in this occasion, by the troops of Charles I of Valois, nicknamed the Daredevil, duke of Burgundy.
A new reconstruction, this time definitive, would be carried out almost a century later, in the year 1526, this time by the Prince Érard of Marck, who commissioned the work to the architect Arnold van Mulcken.
The south facade dates back to the eighteenth century, and in its interior it has two large yards, one of them, which you can visit, the Large Courtyard of Honor, is surrounded by sixty beautiful renaissance columns, with grounds of decor really surprising, with frequent references to the discovery of the new world, and in which we can find, in the first of the columns, a Fleur-de-lis, but as a difference with the usual french heraldry, where also appears with only two pistils in clear reference to the fleur-de-lis of Florence.
The last extension was made in the year 1849, many years after that Liège had ceased to be a principality: the west facade, under the guidance of architect Jean Charles Delsaux.
Nowadays the dependencies of this elegant palace is occuped by the provincial services of Liege and the Palace of Justice.
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