Manneken Pis

A fountain stood at the corner of the Stoofstraat and the Eikstraat by 1388, called the Julianekensborre, though it is not certain that figure urinated. The earliest firm mention of Manneken Pis comes in an administrative document of 1451–52 about the water lines feeding the fountains of Brussels; a record of 1452 uses the phrase daer dmenneken pist, "where the little man pisses", simply to name the street corner. It stood on a column above a double stone basin, part of the city's drinking-water supply.

Several legends account for it. The best known makes it the two-year-old Duke Godfrey III of Leuven, hung in a basket from an oak above the fighting at Ransbeek in 1142 and urinating on the Berthout troops below; another has a boy named Julianske dousing the fuse of charges laid against the city walls.

The Brussels city council ordered the fountain wholly renewed in 1619. The Brabantine sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder made the bronze figure, probably cast and put in place in 1620, while the stone cutter Daniel Raessens remade the column and the basins beneath it.

Manneken Pis was hidden during the French bombardment of Brussels in 1695 and came through undamaged, though the pipes were hit and it could not deliver water for a time. On 19 August that year it was carried back onto its pedestal in triumph, with a line of psalm set above its head: "The Lord placed me on a stone base, and now I raise my head above my enemies". A pamphlet of that year is the oldest text to use the figure as a symbol of the people of Brussels.

By tradition English soldiers made off with the figure in 1745 and it was traced to Geraardsbergen, whose people were thanked with a copy; the story is probably a legend, since the Geraardsbergen figure is no replica but a brass one cast in 1459 by Reinier van Tienen. French grenadiers were said to have tried again in 1747; Louis XV, then in the city, gave Manneken Pis a gown of brocade embroidered with gold and decorated it with the Cross of St Louis.

In 1770 the column and double basin were removed and the figure set into a blue-stone niche in rocaille style taken from another dismantled Brussels fountain. Wrought-iron railings followed, the last of them in 1851, closing off access to the water.

On the night of 4–5 October 1817 the statue was taken by Antoine Licas, a pardoned convict, who broke it up to sell as scrap. He was sentenced in February 1818 to an hour in the pillory on the Grand-Place, branding, and forced labour for life, later reduced to twenty years. The fragments were made good under the sculptor Gilles-Lambert Godecharle and the base marked "1620 – REST 1817"; whether Duquesnoy's bronze was itself repaired or only used to cast a new one has never been settled, and an examination in 2015 brought no answer.

Two attempts on the statue failed in 1955 and 1957. In January 1963 students of the Antwerp association De Wikings carried it off and held it for five days before handing it to the Antwerp authorities; the affair made headlines and raised money for charity.

The theft of 1965 was worse: the thief broke the statue, and only the feet and ankles were left. After an anonymous telephone call to the Antwerp magazine De Post, divers recovered the body from the canal and it was brought back to Brussels on 27 June 1966. A replica had already been cast by the Compagnie des Bronzes, and it is that copy which stands in the niche today. The original, pieced together again in 2003, is displayed in the Brussels City Museum in the King's House on the Grand-Place.

The oldest evidence of dressing the figure is a shepherd's costume worn at the Brussels Ommegang of 1615; the first costume given to it came on 1 May 1698 from the governor Maximilian II Emanuel of Bavaria. An inventory of 1756 counted five complete outfits, and the thousandth costume, by the designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard, arrived in 2018. Since 1954 the wardrobe has been in the care of the Order of the Friends of Manneken Pis, and since February 2017 the costumes have been shown at the GardeRobe MannekenPis museum in the same street. On certain folkloric occasions the statue is hooked up to a keg and pours beer for passers-by.

Manneken Pis has been a protected monument since 16 October 1975. In late 2018 a city technician found the basin leaking a reported 1,000 to 1,500 litres of water a day; a temporary repair followed in March 2019, and the fountain was put on a closed recirculating circuit.