Chassepierre (;

Gaumais Lorrain, also known as Lorrain roman, is a ''langue d'oïl'' spoken by a minority of people in the region of Lorraine in northeastern France, as well as in some parts of Alsace and Gaume in Belgium. It is often referred to as a patois. It is a ...

: ''Tchespire'') is a village of

Wallonia Wallonia ( ; ; or ), officially the Walloon Region ( ; ), is one of the three communities, regions and language areas of Belgium, regions of Belgium—along with Flemish Region, Flanders and Brussels. Covering the southern portion of the c ...

and a district of the municipality of

Florenville Florenville (; Gaumais: ''Floravile'') is a city and municipality in the province of Luxembourg, Wallonia, Belgium. It is located in the southwest part of the country bordering France, on the banks of the Semois river. Spread across an area of ...

, located in the

province of Luxembourg Luxembourg (; ; ; ; ; ), also called Belgian Luxembourg or West Luxembourg, is the southernmost Provinces of regions in Belgium, province of Wallonia within Belgium. It borders the country of Luxembourg to the east, the France, French depart ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. It was a fully-fledged municipality before the 1977

fusion of the Belgian municipalities The fusion of the Belgian municipalities (French: ''fusion des communes'', Dutch: ''fusie van Belgische gemeenten'') was a Belgian political process that rationalized and reduced the number of municipalities in Belgium between 1964 and 1983. In 1 ...

. The village is a member of the non-profit organization

Les Plus Beaux Villages de Wallonie LES or Les may refer to: People * Les (given name) * Les (surname) * L.E.S. (producer), hip hop producer Space flight * Launch Entry Suit, worn by Space Shuttle crews * Launch escape system, for spacecraft emergencies * Lincoln Experimen ...

("The Most Beautiful Villages of Wallonia").

Geography

The main road N83 between

Arlon Arlon (; ; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the Luxembourg (Belgium), province of Luxembourg in the Ardennes, Belgium. With a population of just over 28,000, it ...

and

Bouillon Bouillon can refer to: Food * Bouillon (broth), a simple broth ** Court-bouillon, a quick broth * Bouillon (soup), a Haitian soup * Bouillon (restaurant), a traditional type of French restaurant ** Bouillon Chartier, a bouillon restaurant fou ...

runs along the west side, above the village. The east side of the village is bordered by the

Semois The Semois (; ''Simwès'' in Walloon, often under elided form ''Smwès''; ''Semoy'', ''Sesbach'' in German, ''Setzbaach'' in Luxembourgish of Arlon; and known as the ''Semoy'' in France) is a river flowing from the Ardennes uplands of Belgium a ...

, a

tributary A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...

of the

Meuse The Meuse or Maas is a major European river, rising in France and flowing through Belgium and the Netherlands before draining into the North Sea from the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta. It has a total length of . History From 1301, the upper ...

. Chassepierre is bounded on the south by the French border.

Name

The name ''Chassepierre'' comes from ''Casa petrea'', the Latin for "stone house". Indeed, the houses of the village are mostly made of stones from the 18th and 19th century.

Architectural heritage

The church of Saint Martin was built in 1702.

Festival

The village, considered one of the most charming of Belgium, is mainly famous for its international festival of street art, more commonly known as ' (literally "the Artists' Festival"). The Chassepierre Festival takes place every year on the second-to-last weekend of August. This festival is the second biggest summer event in Wallonia, after

Les Francofolies de Spa ''Les Francofolies de Spa'' is an annual music festival in Spa, Belgium. It is usually held in the month of July of every year and aims at promoting francophone music. Those attending the festival in 2008 exceeded 200,000. The 2012 edition of th ...

, an annual music festival. The festival currently gathers some 50 professional performance companies with different artists such as actors, musicians, dancers, and acrobats from all over the world. More than 30,000 visitors take part in this festival every year.

History

In 1972, some artists, the poet Marie Fizaine and the writer Georges Linze among them, decided to organise ''La fête des Artistes''. In 1973, Alain Schmitz, organiser of social programmes in Florenville, became artistic director of the festival. For its first official edition under the leadership of the village committee, an entire street was dedicated to poets and street artists. A non-profit organisation, ''La Fête des Artistes de Chassepierre'', was then founded to manage the budgets of the festival that were becoming more important. An inhabitant of the village, Marc Poncin, became president of the association and increasingly the festival spread itself to the whole of the village. In 2003, the Festival expanded to meadows situated in the other side of the river Semois. It was then possible to cross the river on a temporary footbridge. Ten years later, in 2013, a permanent bridge was built on the pillars of a former tramway bridge. In 2016, the 43rd edition of the festival took place, gathering more than 50 performance companies from Belgium, but also from The Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Austria and Great Britain.

Bibliography

* Alain Renoy, ''L'invention Chassepierre, 40 ans d'art de rue... 1974-2013'', Éditions Weyrich, 2013. *''Chassepierre sain et sauf ?’' (literally: ‘Chassepierre, safe and sound?’), was published with the assistance of the Ministry of French Culture and in cooperation with the Ministry of Spatial Planning as part of the European Year of Architectural Heritage in 1975 in Liège.''

References

External links

Festival international des arts de la rue de Chassepierre
{{Les Plus Beaux Villages de Wallonie Florenville Former municipalities of Luxembourg (Belgium)