Things to do in Liège

Landmark · Hors-Château, north of the centre

A single straight staircase of 374 steps climbing the hillside from the old town to the citadel, with no landings and no mercy.

Local tip: Go up it once for the view over the Meuse and the rooftops, then never again — the locals' route is the Impasse des Ursulines beside it, which zigzags gently through the Coteaux gardens and comes out at the same place. In October the whole staircase is lit with thousands of candles for one night.

Food · Quai de la Batte, along the Meuse

A Sunday market that runs for well over a kilometre along the river — food, plants, livestock, junk, and most of the province.

Local tip: It claims to be the oldest and largest market in Belgium and it is genuinely enormous. Come before ten if you want to buy anything; come at one if you want the atmosphere and the discounts. The stalls at the eastern end are the food ones, and the boulets and péket sellers are why half the crowd is there.

Landmark · Guillemins

Santiago Calatrava's white steel-and-glass station, opened in 2009 — a monumental building for a city that was not obviously going to get one.

Local tip: There is no façade: the architect refused one, so the vault simply opens onto the square at both ends. Walk up to the Esplanade des Guillemins across the road and look back through it — the view straight through the station to the hills on the far side of the Meuse is the shot, and almost every passenger walks out without turning round.

Neighborhood · The island between the Meuse and the Dérivation

The 'free republic' across the water — Tchantchès' own quarter, and the heart of the city's folklore.

Local tip: The 15 August festivities here are the biggest folk event in Wallonia and last several days, with a procession, a mock funeral and a great deal of péket. It is not a tourist production; it is the neighbourhood's own. Go, but do not plan anything for the 16th.

Nightlife · Between Place du Marché and the Meuse

A grid of pedestrian lanes packed with small bars, which is the reason a lot of people in Belgium know Liège's name at all.

Local tip: It is genuinely a grid, and it fills from about eleven rather than eight — the student population and the university's medical faculty are a large part of why. Place du Marché and the Place Saint-Étienne terraces are where you start; the Carré is where you end up, and it does not close early.

Nature · The hillside above Hors-Château

A hundred hectares of terraced gardens, orchards, staircases and hidden allotments climbing the slope behind the old town.

Local tip: This is the part of Liège nobody expects: a continuous green corridor of impasses and stairways running from the Palais des Princes-Évêques up to the citadel, restored and knitted together over the last two decades. There are half a dozen ways up and they are all better than the Montagne de Bueren. The viewpoint at the top is free, unfenced and almost never busy.