Montagne de Bueren, Monumental staircase in Féronstrée et Hors-Château, Liège, Belgium.
Montagne de Bueren is a steep staircase with 374 steps in Féronstrée et Hors-Château, Liège, Belgium. It stretches 260 meters and connects the lower town to the former citadel plateau at roughly a 30-degree angle.
The staircase was completed in 1880 after the city council decided in March 1875 to build it. It gave the garrison at the citadel a direct route to the centre, bypassing the taverns and prostitutes of rue Pierreuse. The name honours Vincent de Bueren, who led the 600 Franchimontois against Charles the Bold in 1468. The military purpose ended when the citadel was decommissioned in 1891.
Locals sometimes call the stair Lès sî cin grés, "the six hundred steps" in Walloon, confusing it with the 600 Franchimontois; the real six-hundred-step stair lay about 450 m east, along the vanished city wall between the Vivegnis gate and the Païenporte. Since 1994, on the first Saturday of October, thousands of candles light the steps for the Nocturne des Coteaux de la Citadelle.
Small benches at several points offer breaks during the climb. The view over the city widens with each section and rewards the pause.
In July 2020, Belgian explorer Louis-Philippe Loncke climbed and descended the 374 steps 135 times with a 15-kilogram backpack in 65 hours 30 minutes, simulating an Everest ascent of more than 9,000 metres. The staircase had already been ranked first among the world's most extreme stairs by The Huffington Post in 2013.
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