An Overlooked Belgian City Has Quietly Become a Street-Art Haven
The Man of the Meuse, a 10-story-tall diptych by artist SozyOne, in Liège, Belgium.
Photographer: Allard Schager / Alamy Stock Pho
A tiny square in Outremeuse, on an island in the middle of Liège, Belgium, offers a view worthy of a postcard. But it’s not the cafe tables, blooming flowers or single Catholic icon in a glass-fronted box you’re going to be snapping. It’s the four-story-tall mural of a cartoonish thundering herd—an ostrich, a beaver, a hammerhead shark, even a tiny crawfish—that will get your phone out.
The 35-foot-long artwork by Belgian illustrator Psoman, 42, is just one of hundreds of large-scale paintings that dot Liège. It adorns the backside of a modern apartment block wedged awkwardly between narrow, medieval-era buildings—a juxtaposition that perfectly encapsulates this city of 200,000 that sits an hour east of Brussels.