7,258,491 hotelsin 60 categories
It is a small bronze statue of a boy peeing into a fountain, barely 55.5 centimetres tall, on a street corner a few minutes' walk from the Grand-Place. Almost everyone who comes to see Manneken Pis is surprised by how small it is. And almost everyone comes anyway, because for four hundred years this cheeky little figure has been the unofficial symbol of Brussels, irreverent, playful and entirely unbothered by the crowd taking its photograph.
We at Travelmyth, the hotel search engine that ranks stays by your interests and needs across 60 stay categories, have put together this guide to the story behind the statue, where it came from, the legends, the famous wardrobe, and the two companions most visitors never find. You will find Manneken Pis on the corner of Rue de l’Étuve, about a five-minute walk south of the Grand-Place; it is free, and it is always on view. Look for the crowd.
There has been a fountain on this corner for a very long time, the earliest written mention dates from the mid-15th century, in a 1451-52 document about the water lines that fed the city's fountains. The little statue you see, though, is younger: the original was conceived by the Brabantine sculptor Jerome Duquesnoy the Elder and commissioned by the city in 1619. It is a bronze of a naked boy mid-stream, just 55.5 centimetres high. Keeping the fountain and the statue separate in your head is the quickest way to make sense of the dates.
Here is the catch that catches most visitors: the Manneken Pis on the corner is a copy. After the last theft, in 1965, the original 1619 bronze was placed in the Brussels City Museum in 1966, and is now displayed on the top floor, in the Maison du Roi (the King's House) on the Grand-Place. If you want to see the real thing, and a good chunk of its wardrobe, that is where to go, a few minutes back up the street.
Nobody is quite sure why the city built a statue of a peeing boy, and Brussels has cheerfully filled the gap with competing legends. By one story, the toddler-lord Godfrey III of Leuven was hung in a basket above his troops during a battle in 1142, and turned the tide by urinating on the enemy below. By another, a boy named Julianske spotted enemy soldiers laying a charge to blow up the city walls and put out the burning fuse the only way to hand. A third tells of a wealthy merchant whose small son went missing on a visit to Brussels and was found, at last, happily relieving himself on a street corner; the grateful father paid for a statue. None of them is documented as fact, but all of them, in their way, fit the city's sense of humour.
The real reason a tiny fountain became a beloved icon is the costumes. Manneken Pis has a wardrobe of more than a thousand outfits and is dressed regularly throughout the year, according to a published calendar, by an employee of the City of Brussels. The Order of the Friends of Manneken Pis, founded in 1954, helps preserve the tradition and assists with ceremonies surrounding new costumes. The tradition goes back at least to the early 17th century. The first known donated costume is usually dated to 1 May 1698, while the oldest surviving garment in the collection is the outfit offered by King Louis XV of France in 1747; because of its fragile condition, a replica is displayed.
The costumes have their own museum. The GardeRobe MannekenPis, which opened in February 2017 at 19 Rue du Chêne, shows around 150 of the outfits at a time and adds twenty to thirty new ones a year; by the rules, no costume may carry any advertising, commercial, political or religious message. It is a small, genuinely charming museum, and it explains the whole odd tradition better than any single visit to the statue can.
On certain folkloric days in the Brussels calendar, the student festival of Saint-Verhaegen, the planting of the Meyboom, Manneken Pis is connected to a keg and pours not water but beer, which is handed out to the onlookers. It is the kind of detail that tells you everything about how the city feels about its little statue: with affection, and a drink.
Manneken Pis is the famous one, but he is not alone. Since 1987 he has had a female counterpart, Jeanneke Pis, a small bronze statue of a squatting girl tucked down the Impasse de la Fidélité, a narrow lane off the restaurant street of Rue des Bouchers. And completing the trio is Het Zinneke, a bronze statue of a dog cocking its leg against a bollard at Rue des Chartreux 35, near the junction with Rue du Vieux-Marché-aux-Grains, the most recent and most easily missed of the three. Tracking down all three makes a light-hearted half-hour walk through the lower town.
Manneken Pis stands at the corner of Rue de l’Étuve, about five minutes' walk south of the Grand-Place; the closest public-transport stops include Bourse-Grand-Place and Brussels Central Station. It is free and always on view, and there is no need to plan around opening hours, though if you want to catch it in costume, the dressing schedule is posted on the railings around the fountain. It is small, so manage your expectations and enjoy the joke; the surrounding streets, full of chocolate shops, waffle stands and a Tintin mural or two, are half the fun.
Staying in the old town around the Grand-Place puts Manneken Pis, the Galeries Royales and the city's best chocolate within a few minutes' walk. On Travelmyth's Brussels pages you can filter the city's stays across 60 categories, from boutique-style properties in the centre to stays taking steps towards sustainability, and combine any two to find the right fit for you.