Liège might look ugly and neglected, but it has some beautiful hidden spots, like the old lanes off the ancient Hors-Château.
One of the most intriguing of these passages is the Impasse de l’Ange, which gets its name from the little statue of an angel on a house next to the alley.
The narrow alley leads past former workers’ houses into a hidden courtyard where residents have created a tiny urban garden filled with abandoned tricycles, rusting barbeque stands and piles of chopped logs.
Another lane called Impasse de la Couronne leads into the same courtyard. Someone has placed a bench in the alley with a fake street sign reading Place des Amoureux, the Square of the Lovers.
Not far away, the narrow alley Impasse Venta runs between high whitewashed walls into a tiny courtyard.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
