Seraing

Seraing is a municipality and city in Liège Province, in the Walloon region of Belgium. The municipality is made up of the districts of Boncelles, Jemeppe-sur-Meuse, Ougrée and Seraing itself, and it lies on the river Meuse, with the Condroz and the Ardennes to its south. Together with Liège, Herstal, Saint-Nicolas, Ans and Flémalle it forms the greater Liège agglomeration, which holds about 600,000 inhabitants. The place appears in the record in 956, when a Carolingian farming domain on both banks of the Meuse, owned by a man named Saran, was given to the abbey of Sint-Truiden; the territory soon passed to the Prince-Bishopric of Liège. Its modern character comes from heavy industry: the first ironworks were set up there in 1809, and John Cockerill and his brother James changed the steel trade by using blast furnaces fired with coke instead of charcoal, which led to the firm John Cockerill and Company being established in Seraing in 1817. The Val Saint Lambert crystal works site, with the old Val-Saint-Lambert Abbey, is among its sights, and the city is twinned with Douai and Châtel in France and with Rimini in Italy.