Liège (province)
Liège (French: [ljɛʒ]; Walloon: Lîdje; Dutch: Luik, IPA: [lʌʊ̈k]; German: Lüttich, IPA: [ˈlʏtɪç]) is the easternmost province of Wallonia and Belgium.
It borders (clockwise from the north) Limburg in the Netherlands, North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany, Diekirch in Luxembourg, and in Belgium the provinces of Luxembourg, Namur, Walloon Brabant (Wallonia), as well as those of Flemish Brabant and Limburg (Flanders).
It is an area of French and German ethnicity.
The capital of the province is the city of the same name Liège.
History
The modern borders of the province of Liège date from 1795 with the unification of the Principality of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège with the revolutionary French Department of the Ourthe (sometimes spelled Ourte). (Parts of the old Principality of Liege also went into new French départements Meuse-Inférieure, and Sambre-et-Meuse.)
The province of Ourthe, as it was known then, was under French control during the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon visited the city during one of his campaigns and ordered the destruction of its vineyards in order to prevent the Liege wine industry from competing with the French wine industry.
