Philippeville (French pronunciation: [filipvil] ⓘ; Walloon: Flipveye) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Namur, Belgium.
This area was ideal for an attack as it was covered with forests, sparsely populated and divided among the County of Hainaut, that of Namur, by now part of Burgundy, and the Prince-Bishopric of Liège.
In 1556, Charles V named his new fortress Philippeville in honour of his son, Philip II of Spain, who would succeed him in the Netherlands – and on the city – the following year.
In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees stopped the Franco-Spanish War (1635–59) and most frontier cities became French, until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo.
Philippeville's defensive walls were dismantled in 1856 under the reign of King Leopold I, in accordance with the terms of the treaty, having been declared superfluous on account of Belgium's enforced neutrality, and have been replaced by the wide boulevards that circle the city today.