About me, and about this site
I am Maëlle Dethy. I guide people on foot around Namur and I live at the bottom of the hill the fortress sits on, so I walk the Route Merveilleuse most weeks of the year and have done it in sleet, in August heat and in the fog that comes off the two rivers in November. This site is the answer I got tired of giving twice a day: yes, you can go up, no, it does not cost anything, and the part you pay for is underground.
Why the site exists
People arrive at the Citadelle looking for a gate and a ticket desk, and there isn’t one at the top of the ramp. The operator’s own FAQ puts it better than I can: the citadel is a large public park, anyone can walk it freely, at any time of year, at no cost. The car parks are free as well. Money only changes hands for the things that are underground or indoors, and for the ride up if you would rather not climb.
That is a simple thing to say and almost nothing online says it. What is written about this hill tends to be either a municipal page nobody finishes reading or a booking listing that would prefer you not notice what is excluded. So I wrote the plain version: what costs nothing here, what the tickets buy, and what the tunnels are.
What I can and cannot sell you
This is the part most sites like mine leave out, and it is the most useful thing on the page. Nothing bookable through here gets you into the souterrains, into Terra Nova, onto the medieval visit or in possession of a Citadelle Pass. Those four are sold at the citadel’s own desk and there is no route to them for an affiliate, mine included. I checked all twelve listings on the page rather than assuming.
What I can point you at is the guided day: a walk round the town with a local, a photographer who takes you up the hill, a coach that runs down the Meuse. Two of the twelve reach the Citadelle itself by their own account, and neither includes paid entry to anything. They are all set out, with what each listing actually says, on every tour we list.
Where the facts come from
Prices and hours on this site come from the operator of the Citadelle and from the cable-car company, and I say which is which and link to both. Tour details come from the GetYourGuide listing pages, read in full rather than from their summaries. Reviewer quotes are verbatim, typing and all, and every one names the tour it came from. That matters more here than on most sites, because the tours with thousands of reviews behind them go to Dinant and Luxembourg and never come to this hill at all. I have set that out honestly on the reviews page.
Where I do not know something, the page says so instead of guessing. There are questions about the souterrains I get asked constantly — how cold is it down there, how long does the visit take — that I have not put a number on, because the operator does not publish one and my own impression is not a fact.
How the site pays for itself
If you book a tour through a link here, GetYourGuide pays me a small commission and you pay the same price you would have paid anyway. That is the whole business model and it is why the disclosure page exists. It also explains why I would rather tell you that six of the twelve tours have no reviews and that none of them includes a ticket to the tunnels: a site that oversells this hill gets one booking and no returning readers.
Corrections are welcome and I would rather have them than not. A tariff changes, a listing gets rewritten, a footpath closes for works. Tell me and I will fix the page.