Dinant

Dinant occupies a narrow stretch of the Meuse valley beneath a rocky fortress. By the eleventh century its market and judicial rights belonged to the prince-bishops of Liège, and a stone bridge crossed the river. Dinant became one of the bishopric's principal towns. Its metalworkers were renowned for finely worked brass vessels and church furnishings, known as dinanderie, which travelled through the Meuse valley and beyond.

Rivalry with Bouvignes across the river and conflict with Burgundy exposed the town to war. In 1466 Philip the Good and his son Charles the Bold crushed an uprising, burned Dinant and drowned hundreds of its citizens in the Meuse. The wars between France and Spain later brought famine, disease and destruction despite the town's neutrality. French troops occupied it in 1675, and the bishopric was ceded to France in 1795.