Rugs in Liège (centre): buying, restoration, cleaning

Damp and water

Floods on the night of 14 to 15 July 2021. Within the territory of the City of Liège alone: 13,780 people affected, spread across the districts of Jupille, Chênée and Angleur (L'Avenir adds Outremeuse to the list); 4,848 buildings hit, that is 6,556 homes and 350 shops or professional practices; the water rose from 1 to 1.80 m in homes and in businesses; Angleur was the worst affected, with some forty streets. More than 40,000 m³ of waste removed, 2,500 vehicles destroyed, 35 km of roads damaged, 7 km of them severely. Five years on, the City is preparing a 7.5-hectare temporary flood storage area at Chênée, costed at €50 million.

An oriental rug caught in a flooded cellar is not lost by default: it is lost if it dries badly. We handle water damage separately — extraction, rinsing, drying flat under tension, fungicide treatment, checking the selvedges.

The rug market

The Batte market is held every Sunday from 08:00 to 14:30 on the left bank of the Meuse — quais Van Hoegaerden, Roosevelt, sur Meuse, de la Ribuée, de la Goffe, de la Batte, de Maestricht and rue de la Cité — with around 200 pitches according to the City of Liège and between 10,000 and 20,000 shoppers each Sunday. The City calls it nearly five centuries old; its origin is dated to 1561, when the cattle market was moved to the Batte, which makes it the oldest market in the country. Antiques and bric-a-brac are among the goods sold there.

Here an old object is sold and resold all year round, in the open air. Buying for cash follows the same habit, and Sunday is still the easiest day for us to come and value a rug at your home.

The building stock

More than 200 Art Nouveau houses and buildings are recorded in Liège, or buildings incorporating Art Nouveau elements. They are concentrated in the districts that were developing around 1900: Fragnée, Fétinne, Jardin botanique, Saint-Gilles, Sainte-Marguerite, Cointe and the north of Outremeuse. The first of them is the maison Bénard, built in 1895 by Paul Jaspar; Victor Rogister is the most prolific architect of the movement, with some twenty buildings. The style declined after 1918, replaced by Art Deco in the 1920s.

A deep town house, original parquet, a turning staircase: the rug there is old and has often been restored once already. We measure the width of the steps and the turn at the landing before we take it away — that is half the work of a collection.

Who lives here

The University of Liège, founded in 1817, has some 20,000 students. The city is also home to sizeable Algerian, Moroccan, Turkish and Vietnamese communities, as well as an Italian community inherited from the Belgian-Italian protocol of 23 June 1946 — which provided for 50,000 Italian workers for the collieries; 75,000 Italians arrived between 1946 and 1948 and were distributed across the coalfields. 65% of the Italians in Belgium live in Wallonia today.

Two trades live side by side in the same city: the restoration of Turkish, Moroccan or Persian family rugs kept for three generations, and fitted carpet cleaning in student flats that change occupant every year.

Collection

The historic core of Liège is a pedestrian zone monitored by ANPR cameras reading the plates of authorised vehicles. It covers the rues Bex, Féronstrée, Cité, place du Marché, Mineurs, Airs, Rose, Pont, Violette, Hongrée, Potiérue, Saint-Thomas, Pied-du-Pont-des-Arches, place Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Barthélemy, Brasseurs and Poule. Deliveries there are allowed from 09:00 to 11:30; the Tivoli, Ferdinand Hénault, Saint-Georges and Saint-Barthélemy delivery bays operate from 07:30 to 11:30, and the delivery bays outside the pedestrian zone remain accessible 24 hours a day. Since 1 July 2024, 220 spaces have been reserved for residents in zone G.

In the historic core we set the collection of your rugs before 11.30: after that, deliveries are no longer allowed in the pedestrian zone and the van cannot get through. Outside the pedestrian zone, the delivery bays remain accessible 24 hours a day.

Access and parking

There is no low-emission zone in Liège. On 26 April 2024 the Walloon Parliament voted to repeal the LEZ covering the whole of Walloon territory, adopted in 2019: it was judged "disproportionate, inadequate and antisocial" in the light of the EDIT study (2019-2023), which showed that air quality exceedances are highly localised. The Walloon government points instead to targeted measures at city level (Liège, Charleroi, Namur, Mons). Compare with Brussels, where Euro 5 diesel has been banned since 1 January 2026, and Antwerp, under an LEZ since 2017.

No low-emission zone in Liège: no Euro standard stops us coming into the city, even for an estate lot that is heavy to load. The only real filter is the pedestrian zone timetable.