Dinant is the second largest town in the Belgian region of Condroz and one of the most important tourist centers in the Ardennes. Thanks to its delightful situation in the Upper Meuse valley below precipitous limestone rocks, crowned by a mighty citadel, Dinant has become a very lively tourist resort,
especially at weekends when the Meuse is dotted with pleasure boats and canoeists.
The town's culinary specialties are "coques", shaped biscuits made with honey, and "flamiches", a spiced cake made from bread, eggs and cheese. The painter Joachim Patinier (1485-1524) and Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, were born in Dinant.
From the time of the Hohenstaufen dynasty the town belonged to the diocese of Liège and was highly prosperous as early as the 13th-15th C. It was famous throughout the Middle Ages for its brass and copper ware, the so-called dinanderies.
Unlike any other town in Belgium Dinant has been destroyed by war throughout its history. The town was conquered and burnt by Charles the Bold in 1466; Philip the Good had 800 townspeople tied together in pairs and drowned in the Meuse. In 1554 the French laid siege to the town and destroyed it; under Louis XIV they conquered the town and fortress, occupying it until 1703.
In the First World War Dinant was an important bridgehead on the Meuse and, therefore, the focus of heavy fighting, in which 674 of its citizens lost their lives. In the Second World War the Meuse Bridge was bombed in the 1940 air raids and the town suffered heavy damage in 1944, so that hardly anything remains of old Dinant.
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