Manneken Pis (Dutch for ‘Little Pissing Man’) is a landmark 55.5 cm (21.9 in) bronze fountain sculpture in central Brussels, Belgium, depicting a puer mingens; a naked little boy urinating into the fountain’s basin. Though its existence is attested as early as the 15th century, it was designed in its current form by the Brabantine sculptor Jérôme Duquesnoy the Elder and put in place in 1618 or 1619.
Manneken Pis has been repeatedly stolen or damaged throughout its history. The current statue is a replica dating from 1965, with the original being kept in the Brussels City Museum. Nowadays, it is one of the best-known symbols of Brussels and Belgium, inspiring many imitations and similar statues. The figure is regularly dressed up and its wardrobe consists of around one thousand different costumes. Due to its self-derisive nature, it is also an example of belgitude (French; lit. ‘Belgianness’), as well as of folk humour (zwanze) popular in Brussels.
Manneken Pis is an approximate five minutes’ walk from the Grand-Place/Grote Markt (Brussels’ main square), at the junction of the Rue du Chêne/Eikstraat and the pedestrian Rue de l’Étuve/Stoofstraat. This site is served by the premetro (underground tram) station Bourse/Beurs (on lines 3 and 4), as well as the bus stops Grand-Place/Grote Markt (on line 95) and Cesar de Paepe (on lines 33 and 48).
The original name of the statue was Menneke Pis or Menneke Pist. In fact, in the Brabantian dialect of Brussels (known as Brusselian, and also sometimes referred to as Marols or Marollien), een manneke means a small man, whereas een menneke means a little boy (it is the diminutive of men, meaning boy), though in modern Flemish (the local variant of Dutch), menneke also means a small man (it is synonymous to mannetje). Nowadays, the name Manneken Pis (“Little Pissing Man”; also used in English) is official in both French and Dutch. Manneken Pis is sometimes given the nickname of Petit Julien in French or Julianske in Dutch (both meaning “Little Julien”), which in fact refers to a now-disappeared fountain of the “Little Julien” (Juliaenkensborre). This stems from a confusion by the 19th-century historians Alexandre Henne and Alphonse Wauters, who mistook the two well-distinct fountains because of their proximity. Due to its long history, the statue is also sometimes dubbed le plus vieux bourgeois de Bruxelles (“the oldest bourgeois of Brussels“) in French.
