Lier: the secret of Flanders

For: Ricardo Coarasa (photo Card. C./Belén Modrego)
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The peaceful life of Lier revolves around a clock thirteen areas, an amazing contraption that not only marks time, it also details the day and month, the station, zodiac sign and corresponding to solar cycles and lunar, the rotation of the globe and tidal flows. Jubilee Clock, Astronomer masterpiece Louis Zimmer, one of the most illustrious sons of this welcoming city of Flanders halfway between Antwerp and Mechelen, It is the main attraction of Lier, but not the only.

Lier It is welcoming and hospitable and always invites you to stroll the banks of Nete ​​river or to meander its charming Begijnhof, a miniature city, anchored in the thirteenth century, former home of a religious community of women. Good beer and renowned lace, Lier is for Spanish where, in 1496, Felipe "el Hermoso" and the one who sadly has gone down in history as Juana "la Loca" were married. Lier know custards, the strong «flakes» (cakes cinnamon and caramel syrup) and carillon sounds, who spreads his music every fifteen minutes from the belfry of its main square, big Mark. It's the best kept secret of Flanders, obscured by the brightness of Brugge, Antwerp, Mechelen o Ghent.

Lier is welcoming and hospitable and always invites you to stroll the banks of the river Nete

Anyone who comes here to walk its cobbled streets banishing haste soon receive sensitivity of a municipality that has the heroes not politicians or generals, but to a watchmaker (Zimmer himself), poet (Felix Timmermans), painter (Isidoro Opsomer) and a blacksmith (Louis Van Boeckel). sensitivity, certainly, not without determination, since the German bombing destroyed during World War a quarter of its buildings in its offensive for taking Antwerp (in his military cemetery rest 490 Belgian soldiers of the Great War victims, 117 of them unidentified).

Lier is a city accustomed to reinvent itself without losing its roots, habituated to make a virtue of necessity: the same boats used by local fishermen to catch eels drag on the river Nete (a catch prohibited 1974) They are now used to take tourists through the canal. Very close to the Zimmer Tower, next to an old pier you can still see one of those old boats, old local guild pride eel fishing (which remains a local gastronomic delight), the mighty Fishermen (The Brave Boat Fishermen).

It is a city accustomed to reinvent itself without losing its roots, habituated to make a virtue of necessity

Upon arrival at Lier, the first thing that draws attention in his Grote Mark is the bell tower of the fourteenth century, the Belfort, symbol of municipal autonomy (Too bad that you can not visit). With his rococo town hall is the Spanish chapel or Santiago, the Spanish garrison used as a parish (in fact, the surnames of some graves testify that even Spanish past). Bombings 1914 They left standing only the facade. Walking towards the sky Lete under a permanent threat of rain, Vismarkt street must stop opposite the oldest house in the city, the 1393, the 15 square meters plant.

Crossing the channel through Aragon bridge can be reached in just five minutes a Church of San Gumaro, the patron of the city, He is having his statue behind the temple. Gumaro is holy understanding that we pray for healing bone fractures and marriages (It seems he was trained to, Legend has it that his wife, Grimara, It was a shrew). The 11 October, when his feast is celebrated, usually it makes good time, that the lierienses attribute to the "miracle of San Gumaro", whose relics (an urn of 800 kilos) in procession every year since the fifteenth century, a brotherhood of costaleros. A local beer named after him. And in Lier they came to be counted 25 breweries in the eighteenth century, although the latter closed in 1967. In fact, the Caves, its most renowned beer, no longer made here.

With his council Santiago Chapel is located, the Spanish garrison used as a parish

Dating back to the Nete canal, from the street Werf we fall down a picturesque white house with green windows, red and white, Fortune House, a former coal almacés whose left looms the unmistakable silhouette Torre room, the old medieval fortification where you installed the amazing Jubilee Clock given by the Flemish astronomer to his hometown in 1930 to commemorate the first anniversary of the independence of Belgium. On the right facade, four characters that represent childhood, adolescence, maturity and old age give the rooms and at noon overlooks a carousel in parading the first Belgian kings and previous mayors. The invention Zimmer, killed in 1970, very surprised at Albert Einstein, He congratulated by letter to lieriense clockmaker.

Continuing along the canal towards the Beguinage, sure the visitor notices a sculpture of a shepherd with his flock of sheep, that refers to the nickname which are known neighbors Lier: «sheep heads» (Sheep heads), because apparently when the Duke of Brabant offered a university or sheep market opted for the latter, exasperando al noble flamenco: "These from Lier are sheep's heads".

The Beguinage is a haven of peace time forgot, a walled arcadia of pious women

The Beguinaje is a haven of peace forgotten by time since mid-thirteenth century. In this arcadia of pious women (They came to live more than 300 in the early eighteenth century) everything seems to have remained intact, bewitched by a spell that has won the game the inexorable passage of centuries.

The walled enclosure, that they could not even get men from the sunset, It is crossed surrounded by silence and imbued with the serenity of old beaterio, where they were dwellings of the beguines (who took vows of chastity and obedience, but poverty, and they worked for a living) today occupy neighbors Lier, as already it noted a seasoned pragmatism city. Agnes, beguines last Lier, died in 1994 to 98 years until the end of his life he lived at number 5 Sint Margareta, opposite the church of Santa Margarita.

The Begijnhof is crossed surrounded by silence and imbued with the serenity of old beaterio

Leaving the Beguinage Begijnhof by Straat toward the last door left standing of the old city walls, the door of prisoners, you have to make a stop in one of the most famous cafes in Lier: «Hetbelofte Country Room» (the promised land) before continuing the Eikelstraat trade to the Grote Mark to eat in the 't Belfort brewery, an excellent place to lay your day in Lier before heading to Brussels.

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