Bouillon


Bouillon is a municipality in Belgium. It lies in the country's Walloon Region and Luxembourg Province. The municipality, which covers 149.09 km², had 5,477 inhabitants, giving a population density of 36.7 inhabitants per km².
Bouillon has a few schools, a collège and a lycée, banks and a town square. Bouillon Castle still sits above the town centre, and is a popular tourist attraction.

History

In the Middle Ages Bouillon was a lordship within the Duchy of Lower Lorraine and the principal seat of the Ardennes-Bouillon dynasty in the 10th and 11th century. In the 11th century they dominated the area, and held the ducal title along with many other titles in the region. Bouillon was the location of the ducal mint and the dominant urban concentration in the dukes' possession.

There is a common misconception that Bouillon was a county. While the lords of Bouillon often were counts and dukes, Bouillon itself was not a county. The fortification of Bouillon Castle was, along with the County of Verdun, the core of the possessions of the Ardennes-Bouillon dynasty, and their combined territory was a complex mixture of fiefs, allodial land and other hereditary rights throughout the area. An example of the latter is the Advocacy of the monastery of Saint-Hubert en Ardennes, which was granted to Godfrey II by the prince-bishop of Liège.
The most famous of the Lords of Bouillon was Godfrey of Bouillon, a leader of the First Crusade and the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He sold Bouillon Castle to the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. The prince-bishops started to call themselves dukes of Bouillon, and the town emerged as the capital of a sovereign duchy by 1678, when it was captured from the prince-bishopric by the French army and given to the La Tour d'Auvergne family. The duchy was prized for its strategic location as "the key to the Ardennes" and hence to France itself. It remained a quasi-independent protectorate, like Orange and Monaco, until 1795, when the Republican Army annexed it to France.
After the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the city was given to the Netherlands in the 1815 Treaty of Paris. It has been part of Belgium since the Revolution of 1830.

Chronology

Books about Bouillon
Other People's Countries: A Journey into Memory, by the Bouillon-born British writer, Patrick McGuinness

Geography

The town sits in a sharp bend of the river Semois whose total length is 210 km. The surrounding area is largely forested.
The municipality consists of the following sub-municipalities: Bouillon proper, Bellevaux, Corbion, Dohan, Les Hayons, Noirefontaine, Poupehan, Rochehaut, Sensenruth, Ucimont, and Vivy.

Villages

population centers include:

Historical population

YearPopulationAreaDensity
20025,393 148.94 km²36.21/km²

Notable people