Jeanneke Pis
Brussels' self-aware answer to its famous urinating boy — dreamed up at breakfast and sketched on a paper tablecloth in 1985.
Coming soon on iOS — be first to walk Brussels offline.
Denis-Adrien Debouvrie commissioned this 50 cm bronze girl in 1987 explicitly to "restore equality between men and women" — his words at the sketch. She squats in a narrow cul-de-sac off the restaurant-packed Rue des Bouchers, a deliberate counterpoint to Manneken Pis a few streets away. The backstory is frank and funny, and the alley itself is only 30 metres long.
What to look for
- The iron bars caging her against vandalism — an irony worth pausing on
- Short pigtails on the 50 cm bronze figure, mounted in a niche above a water basin
- The blue-grey limestone base she squats on, set into the alley wall at nos. 10–12
Enter Impasse de la Fidélité from Rue des Bouchers (north of Grand-Place); she is on the eastern side roughly 30 metres in.
Jeanneke Pis is one of 33 sights worth the detour in Brussels, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Brussels pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Brussels
- Manneken PisA 55.5 cm bronze boy that somehow became the face of an entire country — the joke is entirely intentional.
- Grand-PlaceEvery guildhall surrounding you was rebuilt from rubble — French artillery levelled the square in 1695, and the Town Hall tower survived only because it was the gunners' aiming point.
- AtomiumNine stainless-steel spheres arranged as an iron crystal blown up 165 billion times — built to headline a World's Fair and never taken down.
- Stoclet PalaceA UNESCO World Heritage house you can only see from the pavement — by design, and by the owner's choice.
- King Baudouin StadiumInaugurated for Belgium's 100th birthday in 1930, this 70,000-seat bowl on the Heysel Plateau hosted six European finals — and the night football changed forever.
- Cathedral of St. Michael and St. GudulaBelgium's national church began as a chapel on a trade-route crossroads in the 9th century — eleven centuries of building decisions are now stacked on a hill called "Mount of Sorrow."