An advertising slogan from 1757: Reintje de vos offers great lodgings.
17 IN THE FOX GOOD LODGINGS 57 has been bricked into the façade of a (former) school, Stokstraat 46. It is hard to imagine that the service of education went as far as offering the possibility of staying there.
There must have been another building there (or the stone has simply been relocated here from a house with the same name at the beginning of the street?) whose occupant made it clear by means of the inscription what to expect: a bed and a good meal. This was undoubtedly intended for the traveller who entered the city through the nearby OL Vrouwe gate.
But why an inscription in French?
Many of those travellers came from Wallonia, which formed the hinterland of Maastricht.
In 2020 it is no different, because when you walk across the Markt today, you imagine yourself in a French-speaking city.
No inhabitant of Maastricht would have been surprised by these French texts, which can also be found on gable stones elsewhere in the city.
Nobody would have had a problem with au cheval noir, la coup d'or or mouton blanc, especially since there was also a picture of them on the plaque.
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