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75-563: Limburg Province may refer to: Limburg (Belgium) Limburg (Netherlands) Province of Limburg (1815–1839) , a former province of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands [REDACTED] Topics referred to by the same term This disambiguation page lists articles about distinct geographical locations with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change

150-463: A county of the United States . At the 2001 census, the median population of a department in continental France was 511,000 inhabitants, which is 21 times the median population of a United States county, but less than two-thirds of the median population of a ceremonial county of England and Wales. Most of the departments have an area of between 4,000 and 8,000 km (1500 to 3000 sq. mi.), and

225-415: A contribution to municipal infrastructures. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government; however, regions have gained importance since the 2000s, with some department-level services merged into region-level services. The departments were created in 1790 as a rational replacement of Ancien Régime provinces with

300-469: A diverse group of dialects which share features in common with both German and Dutch. Limburg mijn Vaderland is the official anthem of both Belgian and Dutch Limburg, and has versions in various dialects of Limburgish, varying from accents closer to standard Dutch in the west, to more distinctive dialects near the Maas. Outside of the two Limburgs related dialects or languages are found stretched out towards

375-629: A general word for a fort, associated not only with the Eburones, but also the Aduatuci, and the later Tungri. The Roman city established in Belgian Limburg was referred to as Aduatuca Tungrorum meaning "Aduatuca of the Tungri". Today this has become "Tongeren", in the southeast of Belgian Limburg, and it was the capital of a Roman administrative region called the " Civitas Tungrorum ". Under

450-544: A high prominence. Limburg is also home to Limburg United , one of the country's top professional basketball teams. The team plays its home games in the Sporthal Alverberg . Arrondissement of Hasselt : Arrondissement of Maaseik : Arrondissement of Tongeren : The first governor of united Limburg (including the province of Limburg in the Netherlands) was Charles de Brouckère , from 1815, after

525-636: A major operation in Kiewit . Many areas such as Genk continue to have a lot of heavy and chemical industry, but emphasis has moved towards encouraging innovation. The old Philips plant is now the site of a Research Campus, and the Hasselt University in Diepenbeek has a science park attached to it. Similarly, the site of the coal mine in Genk is now Thor Park, where Energyville, a research hub of

600-500: A more uniform division into departments ( département ) and districts in late 1789. The process began on 4 August 1789 with the elimination of provincial privileges, and a 22 December 1789 decree (with letters patent in January 1790) provided for the termination of the provincial governments. The modern department system, as all-purpose units of the government, was decreed on 26 February 1790 (with letters patent on 4 March 1790) by

675-573: A new Duchy of Limburg . Because of the Belgian revolution in 1830, this province of Limburg was divided in 1839 by the Treaty of London ; the western portion being recognised as a province of the newly formed Kingdom of Belgium, while the eastern portion remained part of the Netherlands as the modern Dutch Province of Limburg . Both parts retained the name they had been given by the Dutch monarchy after

750-513: A population between 320,000 and 1 million. The largest in area is Gironde (10,000 km (3,900 sq mi).), while the smallest is the city of Paris (105 km (41 sq mi).). The most populous is Nord (2,550,000) and the least populous is Lozère (74,000). The departments are numbered: their two-digit numbers appear in postal codes , in INSEE codes (including "social security numbers") and on vehicle number plates . Initially

825-579: A similar fate. Pottery technology had however apparently been taken up by local tribes of the Swifterbant culture , who remained present throughout. The area became permanently agricultural only in the Bronze Age with the Urnfield culture around 1200 BC, followed by the possibly related Halstatt and La Tène material cultures , which are generally associated with Celts . Under these cultures

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900-733: A similar impact across the continent. Caesar gave the first surviving written description of the area around 55 BC and described its people as the Germani cisrhenani . He described them as allies of the Belgae and Treveri , and reported that they had ancestral links with their neighbours on the east side of the Rhine. Somewhat earlier, we know from surviving fragments of his work that Poseidonius had already mentioned these same Germani , saying that they roasted meat in separate joints, and drank milk and unmixed wine. Caesar noted several peoples within

975-399: A three-digit number. The number is used, for example, in the postal code and was until recently used for all vehicle registration plates . Residents commonly use the numbers to refer to their own department or a neighbouring one, for example inhabitants of Loiret may refer to their department as "the 45". More distant departments are generally referred to by their names, as few people know

1050-418: A view to strengthen national unity; the title "department" is used to mean a part of a larger whole. Almost all of them were named after physical geographical features (rivers, mountains, or coasts), rather than after historical or cultural territories, which could have their own loyalties, or after their own administrative seats. The division of France into departments was a project particularly identified with

1125-519: Is administered by an elected body called a departmental council ( sg. conseil départemental , pl. conseils départementaux ). From 1800 to April 2015, these were called general councils ( sg. conseil général , pl. conseils généraux ). Each council has a president. Their main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school ( collège ) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses, and

1200-533: Is commonly associated, though not all are officially recognised or used. Unlike the rest of the French possessions in Africa , Algeria was divided into departments just like Corsica or Normandy from 1848 until its independence in 1962. These departments were supposed to be "assimilated" or "integrated" to France sometime in the future. There are a number of former departments in territories conquered by France during

1275-462: Is grown. Coal mining has been an important industry in the 20th century, but has now ended in this province. Nevertheless, it has laid the basis for a more complex modern economy and community. In the 20th century, Limburg became a centre for the secondary sector , attracting Ford , who had a major production centre in Genk that closed in December 2014, and the electronics company Philips, who had

1350-411: Is known as the prefecture ( préfecture ) or chef-lieu de département and is generally a town of some importance roughly at the geographical centre of the department. This was determined according to the time taken to travel on horseback from the periphery of the department. The goal was for the prefecture to be accessible on horseback from any town in the department within 24 hours. The prefecture

1425-629: Is located west of the Meuse ( Dutch : Maas ), which separates it from the similarly-named Dutch province of Limburg . To the south it shares a border with the French-speaking province of Liège , with which it also has historical ties. To the north and west are the old territories of the Duchy of Brabant . Today these are the Flemish provinces of Flemish Brabant and Antwerp to the west, and

1500-562: Is not necessarily the largest city in the department: for instance, in Saône-et-Loire department the capital is Mâcon , but the largest city is Chalon-sur-Saône . Departments may be divided into arrondissements . The capital of an arrondissement is called a subprefecture ( sous-préfecture ) or chef-lieu d'arrondissement . Each department is administered by a departmental council ( conseil départemental ), an assembly elected for six years by universal suffrage , with

1575-654: The Ponts et Chaussées (Bridges and Highways) infrastructure administration. Before the French Revolution , France gained territory gradually through the annexation of a mosaic of independent entities. By the end of the Ancien Régime it was organised into provinces . During the Revolution they were dissolved, partly in order to weaken old loyalties. The National Constituent Assembly decided to create

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1650-696: The Battle of Waterloo until 1828. He was followed by Maximilien de Beeckman who governed the united province until 1830, when the Belgian revolution began and division of Limburg began, first with the separation of Maastricht. The splitting of Dutch and Belgian Limburg was completed by 1839. There were also breaks in the sequence of governors in the First World War and at the end of the Second World War. The following list contains all governors of

1725-477: The Belgian Revolution of 1830, the province of Limburg was at first almost entirely under Belgian rule, but the status of both Limburg and Luxembourg became unclear. During the " Ten days campaign ", 2–12 August 1831, Dutch armies entered Belgium and took control of several Belgian cities in order to negotiate from a stronger position. Several Belgian militias and armies were easily defeated including

1800-645: The Germani group, the most important of which were the Eburones who fought against Julius Caesar under their leaders Ambiorix and Cativolcus . Apart from the Germani , somewhere to the west of the Eburones (possibly outside Limburg) were the Aduatuci , who Caesar reported to be the descendants of the Cimbri and Teutones who had migrated around Europe some generations before Caesar. Under Roman imperial rule,

1875-474: The ISO 3166-2 country subdivision codes for the metropolitan departments. The overseas departments have three digits. Originally, the relationship between the departments and the central government was left somewhat ambiguous. While citizens in each department elected their own officials, the local governments were subordinated to the central government, becoming instruments of national integration. By 1793, however,

1950-740: The KU Leuven , VITO, imec , and UHasselt . The region today promotes itself as a centre for trade in the heart of industrialised Europe. It is part of the Meuse-Rhine Euroregion , which represents a partnership between this province and neighbouring provinces in Germany, the Netherlands and Wallonia. Essential elements in Limburgian culture are: Like the rest of Belgium, association football ( soccer ) and cycling, including cyclocross , are dominant sports, and tennis has gained

2025-597: The National Constituent Assembly . Their boundaries served two purposes: The old nomenclature was carefully avoided in naming the new departments. Most were named after an area's principal river or other physical features. Even Paris was in the department of Seine . Savoy , during its temporary occupation, became the department of Mont-Blanc . The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The number of departments, initially 83, had been increased to 130 by 1809 with

2100-661: The President of the Departmental Council as executive of the department. Before 1982, the chief executive of the department was the prefect ( préfet ), who represents the Government of France in each department and is appointed by the President of the French Republic . The prefect is assisted by one or more sub-prefects ( sous-préfet ) based in the subprefectures of the department. Since 1982,

2175-586: The Territoire de Belfort ; the remaining parts of Meurthe and Moselle were merged into a new Meurthe-et-Moselle department. When France regained the ceded departments after World War I , the Territoire de Belfort was not reintegrated into Haut-Rhin. In 1922 it became France's 90th department. Likewise the Lorraine departments were not changed back to their original boundaries, and a new Moselle department

2250-619: The UMP , said in December 2008 that the fusion of the departments with the regions was a matter to be dealt with soon. This was soon refuted by Édouard Balladur and Gérard Longuet , members of the committee for the reform of local authorities, known as the Balladur Committee. In January 2008, the Attali Commission recommended that the departmental level of government should be eliminated within ten years. Nevertheless,

2325-488: The communes . There are ninety-six departments in metropolitan France , with an additional five overseas departments , which are also classified as overseas regions. Departments are further subdivided into 333 arrondissements and 2,054 cantons (as of 2023). These last two levels of government have no political autonomy, instead serving as the administrative basis for the local organisation of police, fire departments as well as, in certain cases, elections. Each department

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2400-633: The trienio liberal ) and the 1833 territorial division of Spain , which forms the basis of the present day Provinces of Spain with minor modifications, are also based on the French model of departments of roughly equal size. Most French departments are assigned a two-digit number, the Official Geographical Code, allocated by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques ( Insée ). Overseas departments have

2475-574: The 10th-century the region slowly came under the permanent control of Eastern Francia , which was to become the Holy Roman Empire . Under the Ottonians the archbishops became responsible for a very large territory stretching up to the delta of the river Maas . Another early saint in the south of Limburg was St Trudo , whose name survives in one of the major towns in southern Limburg, Saint Truiden . Belgian Limburg corresponds closely to

2550-412: The Balladur Committee has not retained this proposition and does not advocate the disappearance of the departments, but simply "favors the voluntary grouping of departments", which it suggests also for the regions, with the aim of reducing the number of regions to 15. This committee advocates, on the contrary, the suppression of the cantons. Each department has a coat of arms and a flag with which it

2625-586: The Belgian Army of the Meuse near Hasselt, on 8 August. The French and British intervened, leading to a ceasefire. After a Conference in London , they signed a treaty in 1839 and established after that both Limburg and Luxemburg would be split between the two states. That happened; Limburg was split into so-called Dutch Limburg and Belgian Limburg. Belgian Limburg became officially Flemish when Belgium

2700-520: The Belgian and Dutch provinces of that name, were first united within one province while under the power of revolutionary France , and later the Napoleonic empire , but then under the name of the French department of the Lower Meuse (Maas) . After Napoleon's defeat, a united Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed, containing modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. While it kept many of

2775-621: The Dutch province of North Brabant to the north. Historically Belgian Limburg is roughly equivalent to the Dutch-speaking part of the secular lordship of the medieval Prince-Bishopric of Liège , which was dominated by the County of Loon . The province of Limburg has an area of 2,427 km (937 sq mi) which comprises three arrondissements ( arrondissementen in Dutch ) containing 44 municipalities. Among these municipalities are

2850-670: The Franks. The church capital moved from the Roman capital Tongeren to nearby Maastricht, and then Liège . This was the area of activity of St Servatius , and later, Lambert of Maastricht . Limburg was part of the central Austrasian kingdom of the Franks which lay between the parts which would become France and Germany. The divisions of the Frankish empire were eventually fixed in the 9th century when this Middle Kingdom came to be known as Lotharingia after its first king, Lothair II . During

2925-452: The French provincial boundaries, the first king, William I , insisted that the name be changed to the " Province of Limburg ", based on the name of the medieval Duchy of Limburg . The only part of Belgian or Dutch Limburg which was really in the Duchy of Limburg is the extreme east of Voeren , the villages of Teuven and Remersdaal, and these only became part of Belgian Limburg in 1977. After

3000-485: The French revolutionary leader the Abbé Sieyès , although it had already been frequently discussed and written about by many politicians and thinkers. The earliest known suggestion of it is from 1665 in the writings of d'Argenson . They have inspired similar divisions in many countries, some of them former French colonies. The 1822 territorial division of Spain (reverted due to the 1823 French intervention ending

3075-843: The Republic (all created in 1946) – French Guiana , Guadeloupe , Martinique and Réunion – the total number of departments in the French Republic had become 101. In 2015 the Urban Community of Lyon was split from Rhône to form the Métropole de Lyon , a sui generis entity, with the powers of both an intercommunality and those of a department on its territory, formally classified as a "territorial collectivity with particular status" ( French : collectivité territoriale à statut particulier ) and as such not belonging to any department. As of 2019 Corse-du-Sud and Haute-Corse are still administrative departments, although they no longer have

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3150-494: The Romans, the Tungri civitas was initially a part of Gallia Belgica . However, it was later split out with the more militarized border regions towards the Rhine, to become Germania Inferior , which was later converted into Germania Secunda . In late Roman and early medieval times , the northern or "Kempen" part of Belgian Limburg became depopulated and uncultivated. This area, still known then by its Roman name as Texandria ,

3225-463: The area around Limburg was known as the "city" ( civitas ) the Tungri . Tacitus reported that these Tungri were the same as the earlier Germani cisrhenani , and noted that the use of the name "Germani" had been expanded in Roman times to cover many peoples in Germany east of the Rhine. The Tungri are generally accepted to have been speakers of a Germanic language , but modern historians disagree over

3300-432: The area. English has also now become a language which is widely understood and used in business and cultural activities, and is supplanting French in this regard. Veldeke, the medieval property of the family of Hendrik van Veldeke , was near Hasselt, along the river Demer, to the west of Kuringen. The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 28.7 billion € in 2018. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power

3375-648: The central and southern part of the province, except for the southeastern corner, where the Jeker (in French: (le) Geer ) runs past Tongeren and into the river Maas (in French: (la) Meuse ) at Maastricht . The eastern border of the province corresponds to the western bank of the Maas, which originates in France. Its drainage basin includes not only the Jeker but most of the northern part of Belgian Limburg. The south of

3450-414: The country's capital city, is a commune as well as a department. In continental France ( metropolitan France , excluding Corsica ), the median land area of a department is 5,965 km (2,303 sq mi), which is two-and-a-half times the median land area of the ceremonial counties of England and the preserved counties of Wales and slightly more than three-and-half times the median land area of

3525-468: The current capital Hasselt , and other large towns including Sint-Truiden , Genk , and Tongeren . Tongeren is the only Roman city in the province, and regarded as the oldest city of Belgium. The municipality of Voeren is geographically detached from Limburg and the rest of Flanders, with the Netherlands to the north and the Walloon province of Liège to the south. This municipality was established by

3600-618: The defeat of France. The first wave of people who brought farming and pottery technology from the Middle East to northern Europe was the LBK culture , which originated in central Europe and reached a geographical limit in the fertile southern Haspengouw part of Limburg about 5000 BC, only to die out about 4000 BC. A later wave of people from this farming culture, the Michelsburg culture , arrived from central Europe about 3500 BC and shared

3675-509: The extent to which they descend from new immigrants who came from over the Rhine after Caesar. Notably, the Tungri participated on the Roman side in the revolt of the Batavi against Roman rule, which was a major event in this region. In the north of Limburg during Roman times lived the Texandri . The site of the fort where Caesar's soldiers encamped was called Aduatuca . This was apparently

3750-672: The late-18th century, following the French Revolution and the subsequent French Campaign in the Low Countries , the region became part of the newly created Lower Meuse Department of the French First Republic (later the First French Empire ), along with a significant part of what would become Dutch Limburg. After the defeat of the French empire and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, this department

3825-435: The link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Limburg_Province&oldid=554767509 " Categories : Place name disambiguation pages Province name disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Limburg (Belgium) Limburg

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3900-475: The male line of the counts ended with Louis IV in 1336, the bishops began to take direct control, and the last claimant to that inheritance, Arnold of Rumigny, count of Chiny gave up his claim. Loon, and the rest of the Prince-Bishopric of Liège , were not joined politically with the rest of what would become Belgium until the French Revolution . Nevertheless, in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries

3975-413: The medieval territory of the County of Loon (French Looz ) which starts to appear in records only in the 11th century. This county originally centred on the fortified town of Borgloon , which was originally simply known as Loon. Although the exact details are unclear today, from an early time Loon was subservient, not only spiritually but also politically, to the powerful Prince-Bishopric of Liège . When

4050-420: The municipal reform of 1977, and on 1 January 2008, with its six villages, it had a total population of 4,207. Its total area is 50.63 km (19.55 sq mi). The name Limburg was not applied to the territory of Belgian Limburg until the 19th century. Instead, the territory broadly coincides with that of the medieval County of Loon , which was one of the main parts of the Prince-bishopric of Liège . In

4125-466: The nearby Ruhr valley region of Germany. And there are also related dialects around Aachen in Germany as well as in the extreme northeast of the mainly French-speaking province of Liège. As in the rest of Flanders a high level of multi-lingualism is found in the population. Limburg is close to Germany and Wallonia , and because of the natural political, cultural and economics links, French and German have long been important second languages in

4200-479: The new Savoyard territory, while the department of Alpes-Maritimes was created from Nice and a portion of the Var department. The 89 departments were given numbers based on the alphabetical order of their names. The department of Bas-Rhin and parts of Meurthe , Moselle , Vosges and Haut-Rhin were ceded to the German Empire in 1871 following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War . A small part of Haut-Rhin, however, remained French and became known as

4275-407: The numbers corresponded to the alphabetical order of the names of the departments, but several changed their names and some have been divided, so the correspondence became less exact. Alphanumeric codes 2A and 2B were used for Corsica while it was split but it has since reverted to 20. The two-digit code "98" is used by Monaco . Together with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code FR, the numbers form

4350-442: The numbers of all the departments. In 2014, President François Hollande proposed abolishing departmental councils by 2020, which would have maintained the departments as administrative divisions, and transferring their powers to other levels of governance. This reform project has since been scrapped. The first French territorial departments were proposed in 1665 by Marc-René d'Argenson to serve as administrative areas purely for

4425-446: The old Roman civitates ("cities"), but under the Merovingians one empire formed, which was divided each generation among family members. In the period around 881 and 882 the areas along the Maas and in the Haspengouw were plundered by Vikings , who established a base on the Maas river. Early Christianity was established first in the Romanised southern parts of Limburg, around Tongeren, and missionaries went north from there to convert

4500-411: The population increased in the region, and it is also during this period that Indo-European languages are thought to have arrived. Although these new technologies and languages once again arrived from the direction of Germany, they can partly be traced back to peoples who arrived in Europe, not from the Middle East, but from the direction of Ukraine and southern Russia around 2000 BC. This migration had

4575-403: The population of Loon was constantly and badly affected by the large-scale international wars of the neighbouring Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic , including the Eighty Years' War , the Nine Years' War , the War of the Spanish Succession , the War of the Austrian Succession , the Seven Years' War , and even the Brabant Revolution . During this period the region's episcopal government

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4650-429: The prefect retains only the powers that are not delegated to the department councils. In practice, their role has been largely limited to preventing local policy from conflicting with national policy. The departments are further divided into communes , governed by municipal councils . As of 2013, there were 36,681 communes in France. In the overseas territories , some communes play a role at departmental level. Paris ,

4725-429: The province is the northern part of the Hesbaye region (in Dutch: Haspengouw ), with fertile soils, farming and fruit-growing, and historically the higher population density. The hilliness increases in the southeast, including the detached Voeren part of Limburg. North of the river Demer and the Albert Canal is part of the Campine (in Dutch: (de) Kempen ) region, with sandy soils, heathlands, and forests. This area

4800-403: The province of Limburg since the Second World War. Sports & Entertainment Departments of France In the administrative divisions of France , the department ( French : département , pronounced [depaʁtəmɑ̃] ) is one of the three levels of government under the national level (" territorial collectivities "), between the administrative regions and

4875-412: The revolutionary government had turned the departments into transmission belts for policies enacted in Paris. With few exceptions, the departments had this role until the early 1960s. These maps cannot be used as a useful resource of voter preferences, because Departmental Councils are elected on a two-round system, which drastically limits the chances of fringe parties, if they are not supported on one of

4950-428: The status of departmental " territorial collectivities ": region and department functions have been managed by a " single territorial collectivity " since 2018. Despite the intention to avoid the old nomenclature, often the names of pre-1790 provinces remained in use. For example, the name of Berry , though no longer having an official status, remains in widespread use in daily life. The departmental seat of government

5025-416: The territorial gains of the Republic and of the First French Empire . Following the defeats of Napoleon in 1814–1815 the Congress of Vienna returned France to its pre-war size and the number of departments was reduced to 86 (three of the original departments having been split). In 1860 France acquired the County of Nice and Savoy , which led to the creation of three new departments. Two were added from

5100-455: The two rounds by a moderate party. After the 1992 election, the left had a majority in only 21 of the 100 departments; after the 2011 election, the left dominated 61 of the 100 departments. (Mayotte only became a department after the election.) Key to the parties: The removal of one or more levels of local government has been discussed for some years; in particular, the option of removing the departmental level. Frédéric Lefebvre , spokesman for

5175-500: Was 29,000 € or 96% of the EU27 average in the same year. In the economic field tourism is being actively promoted with publicized attractions including Limburg's claim to be a "Bicycle Paradise" ( Fietsparadijs ). There's also the possibility to walk in nature reserves, such as the "High Kempen National Park". In the south, the Haspengouw ( Hesbaye ), predominantly situated in Limburg, is now Belgium's major area for fruit growing . In Limburg more than 50% of Belgium's fruit production

5250-401: Was created in the regained territory, with slightly different boundaries from the pre-war department of the same name. The reorganisation of Île-de-France in 1968 and the division of Corsica in 1975 added six more departments, raising the total in Metropolitan France to 96. By 2011, when the overseas collectivity of Mayotte became a department, joining the earlier overseas departments of

5325-479: Was divided into language areas in 1962. In the case of Voeren , surrounded by French speaking parts of Belgium, and having a significant population of French speakers, this was not without controversy. Only in 1967, the Catholic Church created a diocese of Hasselt , separate from the diocese of Liège . The centre of Belgian Limburg is crossed east to west by the river Demer and the Albert Canal , which run similar paths. The Demer's drainage basin covers most of

5400-522: Was often unable to maintain law and order, and the economy of the area was often desperately bad, affected by plundering soldiers and gangs of thieves such as the " Bokkenrijders ". Nevertheless, the population contained strongly conservative Catholic elements, and not only supported the conservative Brabant revolution, but also rebelled unsuccessfully against the revolutionary French regime in the Peasants' War of 1798 . The modern Limburg region, containing

5475-601: Was reconstituted into the Province of Limburg as part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands . The new name had its own medieval history, being associated with the extinct Duchy of Limburg , which had its capital at nearby Limbourg-sur-Vesdre , now in the French-speaking Belgian province of Liège . The new Dutch monarchy chose this name because it desired to recreate the prestigious old title in

5550-558: Was relatively less populated, until coal-mining started in the 19th century, attracting immigration from other areas, including Mediterranean countries. As in all Flemish provinces, the official language is Dutch , but two municipalities, Herstappe and Voeren , are to a certain extent allowed to use French to communicate with their citizens. They are two of the municipalities with language facilities in Belgium. Several variations of Limburgish are also still actively used, these being

5625-580: Was settled by incoming Salian Franks from the north, who were under pressure from Saxons . The southern or "Haspengouw" part of Belgian Limburg was an important agricultural region and remained more heavily Romanised, and eventually became a core land of the Frankish empires. By the 9th century, the Frankish Carolingian dynasty , who had lands in and around Belgian Limburg, ruled an empire that included much of Western Europe . The Franks originally had several smaller kingdoms ruling each of

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