Namur (Dutch: Namen) was a county of the Carolingian and later Holy Roman Empire in the Low Countries, a region in northwestern Europe.

During Roman times, the region around Namur was first mentioned in Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico in the second half of the 1st century BC.

The first mention of a region ruled by Namur (Latin: in pago Namurcensis) treated it as a part of the older Lommegau (pagus or comitatus Lommensis) in the year 832 in a document by Emperor Louis the Pious.

[2] The first count of note was Albert III (1063–1102), who held the office of advocate of the Princely Abbey of Stavelot-Malmedy.

The house of Dampierre would rule until 1421, when the county of Namur was sold to the Burgundian duke Philip the Good.

After the county of Namur was bought by Philip the Good, he integrated it into a large territorial and political union, called the Burgundian Netherlands.

The Spanish king Philip II wanted to turn Namur into a Roman Catholic bastion as a bulwark against the rise of Calvinism.

In Namur, Don Juan received Margaret of Valois (the sister of the French king), and organised a magnificent celebration in her honor.

Louis and his legendary military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban personally oversaw the siege.

The strategically important bastion of Namur played a decisive role in the battles associated with the Belgian Revolution.

Clay formed the raw materials for the ceramic-production and for the making of molds for the so-called dinanderie, the overall name for the yellow copper brass art objects such as lecterns, candleholders, tableware and others.

The metal industry was also important: in the 16th century the mouth of the Meuse (Dinant, Bouvignes, Namur, but also Huy and Liège) was the central region for metallurgy in the Southern Netherlands.