This is not the original statue, which was prone to theft and "maltreatment" and was removed for safekeeping. It's known that the boy's effigy has graced the city since at least the time of Philip the Good, who became Count of Flanders in 1419. Among the speculations about his origins are that he was the son of a Brussels nobleman who got lost and was found while answering nature's call, and also that he was a patriotic Belgian kid who sprinkled a hated Spanish sentry passing beneath his window. Perhaps the best theory is that he saved the Town Hall from a sputtering bomb by extinguishing it--like Gulliver--with the first thing handy.

Louis XV of France began the tradition of presenting colorful costumes to "Little Julian" to make amends for the French abduction of the statue in 1747. Since then the statue has acquired more than 500 outfits, which are housed in the Museum of the City of Brussels in the Grand-Place.