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This charmingly expressive statue, which has come to symbolise Brussels, was sculpted in 1619 by Duquesnoy and is traditionally supposed to owe its existence to a rich merchant from Brussels, whose small son had run away from home.
Summoning troops and police to scour the town in search of the lost infant, the merchant vowed that if his son was found alive, he would commission a statue to commemorate the event. History does not record why the little boy (“manneken” in Flemish dialect) was naked - only what he was busy doing at the time when found.
During the next 250 years, the fountain provided the area around the City Hall with drinking water and may, in fact, be the first recorded occasion on which a local government may have been able to claim with justifiable pride that “this water has been passed by the management”.
Mannekin Pis, also known to some as “le petit Julien” (the family jewels?), has become Brussels’ oldest and best-known citizen. Ever since he first appeared on the Brussels scene, he has been presented with innumerable sets of clothes in an amazing and varied collection of styles. Almost every leading political figure in the past 350 years, from King Louis XV of France onwards, has taken time off from his State tour of Brussels to present Manneken Pis with a new outfit. Indeed, on most days, Manneken Pis is dressed in one of his suits, which are on permanent display in the Brussels City Museum. Manneken Pis is also an honorary Master Sergeant of the U.S. Marine Corps, having received his “promotion” and a dress-uniform to prove it from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, following the liberation of Brussels by the allies in World War II.
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