Liège [Province of] (Belgium)

Last modified: 2002-11-30 by ivan sache
Keywords: liege | wallonia | coat of arms | lions: 3 (green) | perron | horn | governor | proposal |
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Only two Belgian provinces haven't adopted officially a flag: Hainaut and Liège.

Pascal Vagnat, 30 May 1999

• Banner of arms (unofficial)
• Provincial colours (unofficial)
• Provincial Governor's honorary flag
• Rejected proposal of provincial flag

See also:

• Belgium
• Belgium: Administrative divisions
• Wallonia
• Municipal flags in the province of Liège
• Neutral Territory of Moresnet

Banner of arms

by Gerard van der Vaart

Quartered, left top side perron or, flanked by an L and G or, on gules, right top side fess silver on gules, right bottom side five fesses gules on or, bottom two above one horns gules and silver on or, left bottomside two above one lions rampant sinople, crowned or, tongued and nailed gules, on silver.

Filip van Laenen

The upper quarter is made of the municipal arms of the city of Liège, described as follows:

"The present arms were officially granted on February 1st, 1947, and may be surrounded by several chains of military decorations. The arms of Licge show a monument or 'perron'. The perron is most likely derived form an actual monument in the city. It is first seen on a coin of Hendrik II of Limburg, as Prince-Bishop of Liège, dating between 1145 and 1165. The perron was shown freely on coins until the mid 14th century, when the symbol was placed in a shield. Whether the city at the time already used it as city arms is not known. Ever since the perron, including the base with the three lions, has been the arms of the city. The actual shape, however has varied widely during the centuries, and similarly, not all images show the lions. In the late 17th century the whole name, LIEGE was shown around the perron. The letters L and G appear for the first time in the late 18th century."

Jarig Bakker, 17 November 2001

These arms do not represent correctly the current province of Liège: the former County of Hoorn, represented by the three posthorns, was incorporated into the Netherlands in 1839; the former Duchy of Bouillon, represented by the horizontal red-white-red stripes, is now located in the Belgian province of Luxembourg; the County of Looz, represented by the horizontal yellow and red stripes, is now more or less the Belgian province of Limburg. Only one half of the current province of Liàge belonged to the former Principality of Liège, represented by the perron and letters LG. The other half was split between the former Duchy of Limburg and Abbey-Principality of Stavelot-Malmédy, which are not represented on the provincial banner of arms.

Source: Pascal Parent ,Deux projets de drapeaux rejetés : Provinces de Hainaut et Liège (Two rejected proposals of flags: Provinces of Hainaut and Liege). Vexillacta [vxl] #15, March 2002.

Ivan Sache, 22 March 2002

by Gerard van der Vaart & Mark Sensen

The flag is used either in 1:1 or 2:3 proportions.

Mark Sensen, 30 January 2001

Provincial colours

The colours were taken from the arms. These colours were not fixed. Various sources give different designs, but two main sets can be compiled.

• A chart called Vlaggen der Belgische Provincies - Drapeaux des Provinces Belges (Flags of the Belgian Provinces). This is not dated, but to judge from the font face used, it is from the 1920s or 1930s.

by Mark Sensen

• Some Dutch atlases and books about the provinces show another set, published by Rudi Koot in Vexilla Nostra [vxn] #185 (1993) p. 32-33

by Mark Sensen

Provincial Governor's honorary flag

by Mark Sensen

I have some xerox copies of sheets which seam to come from a book (bilingual Dutch and French) containing regulations (for the Navy maybe?). It contains a sheet with the honorary flags of the governors of the provinces, adopted by Order in Council of 28 October 1936.
It includes a construction sheet. The flags are 150x150 cm. Each stripe is 50 cm. The shields are 43.5 cm. wide and 50 cm. high excluding 3.75 cm for the point of the shield. The shields are in the center of the black stripe.

Mark Sensen, 27 January 2001

Rejected proposal of provincial flag

by Ivan Sache

Léon Nyssen, Editor of Vexillacta [vxl], designed a flag proposal for the province of Liège and send it to the Provincial authorities on 30 October 2001.

The proposal was described in Vexillacta #15 (March 2002) by Pascal Parent in a paper entitled Deux projets de drapeaux rejetés : Provinces de Hainaut et Liège (Two rejected proposals of flags: Provinces of Hainaut and Liege).

The flag proposal is not fully related to the provincial arms because these arms do not represent correctly the current province of Liège, as explained above. The flag proposal is 2:3, vertically divided, with four vertical stripes yellow-red-yellow-red and five horizontal white-red-white-yellow-blue. The vertical stripes have the colours of the former Principality of Liège. The upper horizontal, white-red stripes have the colours of Limburg. The lower horizontal, white-yellow-blue stand for the Abbey-Principality of Stavelot-Malmédy. The colours are also placed according to the geographical location of the former entities: Liège on West, Limburg in North-East and Stavelot-Malmédy in South-East.

On 11 January 2002, Governor Paul Bolland informed Léon Nyssen that the Permanent Deputation, based on a report by the Provincial Archivist M. Flagothier, had rejected the proposal and decided to keep the banner of arms as unofficial flag.

Ivan Sache, 22 March 2002