Citadelle de Namur: a hilltop fortress you can walk for free

Four questions people ask on the way up

Answered here so you are not working them out at the top of the ramp.

Do I have to pay to go up?

No. The park is free at any hour of the year, and so are the four car parks on the hill. See what costs nothing.

If I buy one ticket, which one?

For a first visit, the souterrains: about fourteen euros for an adult, less if you qualify for the reduced rate. What the tunnels are, and the full tariff.

Is the cable car included in a Citadelle Pass?

No. It is run by a different operator on its own ticket and appears in neither pass. Fares and hours.

How long does the hill take?

Longer than most people plan for, if the weather is kind. See how long to allow and what it is like with children.

An honest guide to the Citadelle de Namur

The first thing worth knowing is that being on the Citadelle costs nothing. The operator says so itself: the citadel is a large public park, anyone can walk it freely, and it can be visited at any time of the year at no cost. Parking is free too, in front of the Guy Delforge perfumery, along the Route Merveilleuse, at the Terra Nova visitor centre or on the Esplanade. What you pay for is what lies underneath the hill, and, if your knees would rather not, the way up it.

Where it is, and why the fortress is there

Namur sits where the Sambre runs into the Meuse, and the fortress sits on the rock above the join. Whoever held the rock watched both rivers at once. The address, Route Merveilleuse 64, is also the road that curls up the back of the hill, and it is the road I walk most weeks in whatever the Belgian sky is doing. Drive it, park free at the top, and you need never open your wallet.

The three levels

The hill reads as three parts rather than one, and knowing the names saves confusion at the signposts. Highest is the Donjon. Below it, the Médiane. At the far end, Terra Nova, where the visitor centre and its audio-guided visit are. You can cross all three on foot without buying anything, which is what most locals do.

What the ticket desk actually sells

Four visits and two passes, and the citadel sells every one of them itself. The underground galleries, the souterrains, are the headline, at about fourteen euros for an adult and a little less on the reduced rate. A separate visit called The Citadel in the Middle Ages costs the same for an adult and rather less reduced. The tourist train and the audio-guided visitor centre are a few euros each. Then there are two Citadelle Passes: a three-visit pass, at about twenty-two euros, which is the souterrains or the medieval visit plus the train plus the centre; and a four-visit pass, at around thirty-six, which is both of those plus the same two. The reduced rate covers children of six to eighteen, students and visitors of sixty-five and over, and under-sixes go in free. Exact figures move, so ours live in the tariff table on the tickets page.

The cable car is not part of any of that

The téléphérique belongs to a different operator, sells its own ticket, and appears in neither pass. This is the most common misunderstanding I hear on the Esplanade, usually from someone holding a pass and pointing at the cabins. It runs from ten in the morning to half past six, and a ticket stays valid for thirty days from purchase, which is more useful than it sounds: buy a one-way on a good morning, walk up, and ride down whenever you have had enough. Fares differ by age, and toddlers ride free. Current numbers are on the cable car page.

Opening hours, and the part that never closes

From April through to the beginning of November the paid attractions open every day, ten in the morning until six in the evening. From early November into the first days of January they close an hour earlier and take Mondays off. The park does not close at all. Hold on to that, because when someone tells you the Citadelle is shut they mean the ticket desk is, and the walls, the grass and the view down to the water are still free. Dates in full are on the opening hours page.

What a guided day here does and does not buy you

Nothing sold through GetYourGuide includes entry to the souterrains, Terra Nova, the medieval visit or a pass. Those are sold at the citadel’s own desk and nowhere else, and I would rather write that here than have you find it out at a turnstile. Three of the twelve listings we track put the boundary in their own words. The two-hour walk with a local says entry tickets for public transportation, museums and monuments are not included; the sixty-minute express walk says much the same; the photo shoot says you will take the famous Namur cable car, or walk up, to reach the Citadel, and that the cable-car ticket is yours to buy. Only two of the twelve reach the Citadelle at all: that photo shoot, and a private day from Brussels whose inclusions read “Visit of Namur city and citadel”. A Bastogne tour drives through Namur on its way to the Ardennes and is not a citadel tour. The whole catalogue is on the tours page.

One warning about reviews

Six of the twelve listings carry no rating at all, and the two with thousands of reviews between them are day trips up the Meuse to Dinant and into Luxembourg. Those reviewers are praising a coach, a guide and a river valley, not this citadel, because they never came to it. Both of those listings also carry a GetYourGuide category tag reading “Underground, catacombs & cemeteries”, which is about Luxembourg’s casemates and has nothing to do with the souterrains under Namur. We keep every quote beside the tour it came from on the reviews page.

If you only have an afternoon

Park free on the Esplanade or along the Route Merveilleuse, walk the grass, find the wall above the confluence and look at how far down the two rivers are. Then decide whether the tunnels are worth about fourteen euros to you; for most people they are, once. If someone in your group cannot manage the ramps, the cable car solves the climb. And if you arrive to find the desk closed, you have lost nothing, because the part of the Citadelle people actually remember was never for sale.