Old City of Luxembourg

Among Europe’s fortified sites, Luxembourg served as one of its greatest for centuries. Founded as a small fort in the middle of the 10th century, the City of Luxembourg expanded in the 12th century with settlements and stone fortifications, which then grew in the 14th and 15th centuries. From the Holy Roman Empire to the House of Burgundy, from the Habsburgs to French and Spanish kings and then to the Prussians, the city was repeatedly reinforced as it passed from one power to the next. Its walls were dismantled after the Treaty of London established the state’s neutrality in 1867. But a number of the fortifications’ gates, forts, bastions, redoubts and casemates still stand, and Luxembourg today retains the layout of the old city, all vestiges of the city’s history.

—Prepared by the World Tribune staff

June 14, 2024, World Tribune, p. 12