Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Brooklyn Bridge, London has Big Ben, Berlin has the Brandenburg Gate—and Brussels has a cast-bronze boy pissing on a streetcorner.
He’s both a symbol of holding on to very old traditions, and a general sassy ‘So what? That’s who we are!’ attitude, and it draws crowds all the time, every day.
He has more costumes than a couture house, and a museum all his own to keep them in. And Manneken Pis even has walls devoted to variations on the theme, with the urinating boy inserted into all manner of political and social debate.
The gags, jabs, cartoons and adaptations aren’t new, either: The Brussels City Museum preserves a wall of them from the past two centuries and this one.
But life hasn’t always been easy for the little bronze boy; in fact you could say it’s been so hard he’s hardly himself—and that’s because he isn’t. The one standing out there in his oversized rotunda (salvaged from another Brussels fountain in the 1770s) is a casting made from the original mold in 1965 after the original was stolen, not for the first time. The original was recovered in pieces, restored and rests in a case in the City Museum.
The original was made in 1619 by sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder to replace an earlier version; the oldest verified version was in use in the 1450s, mentioned in an official document about the water lines feeding Brussels’ public water fountains. Until 1855, when water piped into houses became the city’s standard, Manneken Pis provided drinking and washing water for Bruxellians.
The first recorded theft of the statue led to the first of its many (now more than a thousand) costumes. After surviving the French bombardment of the city in 1695, Manneken Pis became an icon, and the 1747 attempted theft by French soldiers led to a rebellion and threats of bloody revenge. To calm things down, Louis XV sent a brocade gentleman’s gown with gold embroidery and authorized the statue to carry a sword. The costume above is a reproduction of that one.
The costume mania is mainly a 20th-century phenomenon. A 1756 inventory showed five costumes. Between 1918 and 1940 thirty more were added. By 1994, there were 400, 750 in 2005 and the thousandth costume was added in 2018. The costumes aren’t an everyday thing, but are usually worn several times a week; changing the costume is the work of the Order of the Friends of Menneken Pis, founded in 1954. The Order operates the Garderobe Manneken Pis, the costume museum.
Paddington Bear, a gift from the Braille League and one from the French Embassy
1949 costume representing Maurice Chevalier, who wrote the Manneken Pis’ own song
Moldova, Ukraine and Japan
And, of course, there are souvenirs. Not just magnets or key fobs, but statues and statuettes in almost any size and color you might like. Manneken Pis’ corner has several stores specializing in this, including quite a few in chocolate and other candies. Anywhere else, it might seem a little gauche, but it’s hard to embarrass a boy who’s spent his life peeing in public!
I visited Manneken Pis a few years ago, but I had no idea there was a museum. So interesting!