The costumes
Dressed about 130 times a year in outfits gifted from around the world.
Myrabella — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Txllxt TxllxT — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gargarapalvin — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gargarapalvin — CC BY-SA 4.0
Many tales of his origin (a boy who put out a bomb fuse, a lost prince's son) are all legends; the truth is he was a seventeenth-century public fountain that became a symbol of the city's mocking spirit, and the traditions of dressing him (since the eighteenth century) and his several thefts and returns made him a legend. The current statue is a copy (1965); the original is in the City Museum on the Grand-Place.
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Manneken Pis is Brussels' most famous citizen and its smallest: a bronze statue of a boy urinating into a fountain, only 61 centimetres tall, made by the sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy in 1619 — a symbol of Brussels' self-mocking, humble spirit that never takes itself too seriously. Visitors are surprised by his size, then fall for his charm. His quirk is his wardrobe: more than a thousand costumes gifted by countries, associations and professions worldwide, some worn on set occasions (about 130 times a year) — from an Elvis suit to national dress. The costumes are shown in a small nearby museum, the GardeRobe MannekenPis. And he has "siblings": Jeanneke Pis (a girl) and Zinneke Pis (a dog) around the city. Steps from the Grand-Place (follow the crowds), amid the lanes of chocolate and waffles — a few minutes' stop on a centre walk, not a destination in itself.
Dressed about 130 times a year in outfits gifted from around the world.
The symbol of the humble self-mockery that defines the city.
Corner of Rue de l'Étuve and Rue du Chêne, 1000 Brussels