Four days in Luxembourg City: a gorge runs straight through the capital

Three nights on the plateau, the casemates and the cliff walk on the first afternoon, the lower town and Kirchberg on the second, and a castle in the Ardennes on the third.

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Length
4 days, 3 nights
Where you stay
Luxembourg (city)
Places
11 across 4 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Luxembourg City is built on a rock with a canyon around it. The Alzette and the Pétrusse have cut a gorge seventy metres deep straight through the middle of the capital, so the old town stands on a plateau, a whole district sits at the bottom, and the two are joined by bridges, lifts and a path along the cliff edge that somebody once called the most beautiful balcony in Europe. It is a small city that looks impossible in photographs and turns out to be true.

For three hundred years it was one of the strongest fortresses on the continent, rebuilt in turn by Burgundians, Spanish, French, Austrians and Prussians, until a treaty in 1867 ordered the walls pulled down. Twenty-three kilometres of tunnels are still under the rock and part of them is open to walk through.

The other half of the city is glass. Kirchberg, on the plateau across the valley, holds the banks and a good share of the European institutions, and gets you the Court of Justice, an I. M. Pei museum and a concert hall within ten minutes of the medieval streets. Four days covers both, plus a day out to the best castle in the country, and every bus, tram and train in Luxembourg is free.

Highlights

  • The Chemin de la Corniche, a footpath on the old ramparts with the whole gorge below it
  • The Bock casemates, a warren cut into the rock the first castle was founded on in 963
  • The Grund at the bottom of the cliffs, reached by a glass lift that costs nothing
  • A museum of modern art dropped into the corner of an 18th century fort by I. M. Pei
  • Vianden castle on its ridge in the Ardennes, an hour and a half away and free to get to

Where to stay

Luxembourg City, three nights on the plateau

Stay in the old town on the upper plateau, between the Place d'Armes and the Bock, and everything except the day out is a walk. Rooms are expensive by any standard and cheapest at weekends, when the business travellers go home, which is the reverse of the usual pattern.

The area around the station has the cheaper hotels and is the least appealing part of the city, though it is safe enough and the tram runs from the door. The Grund, down in the valley, is the prettiest place to sleep, noisy at weekends, and involves a lift or a long climb every time you go out.

Day by day

Day 1 in Luxembourg (city)

The cliff walk, the casemates and the old town squares

Walk out to the edge first. The Chemin de la Corniche follows the top of the old city wall with the gorge opening below it, and ten minutes on it explains the city better than any museum.

Then go inside the rock. The casemates start at the far end of the same walk, and after them the two squares of the upper town are three minutes away and full of tables.

  1. 15:00

    Le Chemin de la Corniche

    Visit

    A pedestrian promenade along the ramparts above the Alzette, looking down on the rooftops of the lower town, the abbey and the old bridges. Ten minutes end to end, or an hour if you stop, and best in the last light of the day. Free, and open at all hours.

  2. 16:00

    Bock Casemates

    Other

    Tunnels, galleries and gun chambers cut into the sandstone under the Bock, part of a system that once ran for 23 kilometres and could shelter thousands of soldiers with their workshops and kitchens. Steep steps, low ceilings, uneven floors and openings in the rock face with a view straight down the valley. Take a jacket; it is cold in there in August.

  3. 17:30

    Place d'Armes

    Architecture

    The smaller of the two upper town squares and the one where the city sits outside: a bandstand in the middle, cafe tables on all four sides from spring to autumn, and free concerts most summer evenings. A good place to work out what you are doing next.

  4. 19:30

    Dinner in the upper town

    Eat

    Prices in the centre are high and the quality is generally worth it. If the bill matters, note where you are eating and come back for the set lunch instead.

With more time: The Grand Ducal Palace is five minutes away and is worth a look from the street at any time of year, with a sentry outside and a Renaissance front that would not be out of place in Spain. It only opens for guided visits for a few weeks in high summer.

Day 2 in Luxembourg (city)

Down to the Grund, and across to the glass city

Today uses the height rather than fighting it. Take the free lift down into the valley in the morning, walk the river through the lower town, then come up the other side to the quarter where the banks and the European institutions are.

The contrast is the whole point of Luxembourg: a medieval abbey by the water and, twenty minutes later, a Pei building on a fortress wall with an espresso that costs as much as the museum ticket.

  1. 09:30

    Grund

    Other

    The lower town at the bottom of the gorge, where the Alzette runs past old stone houses, locks and a rock face with the fortifications on top of it. Lanes, footbridges and a couple of the best bars in the city. Walking down takes fifteen minutes; walking back up takes rather longer, which is what the lifts are for.

  2. 11:30

    Neumünster Abbey

    Religious

    A Benedictine abbey by the river that spent most of the 19th and 20th centuries as a prison and is now a cultural centre with a courtyard, a cafe, concerts and exhibitions. Free to walk into, and the buildings and the cliff behind them are worth ten minutes on their own.

  3. 12:45

    Lunch in the valley or on Kirchberg

    Eat

    I. M. Pei's building of 2006, dropped into the surviving corner of a Vauban fort with the old stone left standing around the glass. The collection changes constantly and the architecture is half the visit. The tram from the centre takes ten minutes and costs nothing.

  4. 14:15

    MUDAM

    Culture

    I. M. Pei's museum of modern art, built in 2006 into the surviving corner of a Vauban fort, with the old stone walls left standing around the glass. The collection changes constantly and the building is half the visit. The tram from the centre takes ten minutes and costs nothing.

With more time: The fortress museum is the next building along, inside the 18th century fort whose three towers gave Kirchberg its name, and it makes sense of everything you walked through the day before. Ten minutes further and you are among the Court of Justice, the concert hall and the European towers, which are worth a look even if you have no business with any of them.

Day 3 in Luxembourg (city)

Vianden, a castle on a ridge in the Ardennes

Take the train north to Ettelbruck and the bus on to Vianden, which is an hour and a half in total and costs nothing at all. The valley narrows as you go, the hills close in, and the country stops looking like a financial centre and starts looking like the Ardennes.

The castle is on the ridge above the town and is visible for most of the approach. Go up first, come down through the town, and leave time for the chairlift, which gets you the view of the castle from the outside that the castle itself cannot give you.

  1. 10:30

    Vianden Castle

    Historic

    One of the great feudal castles of Europe, built between the 11th and 14th centuries on a Roman fort, ruined in the 19th and rebuilt from the 1970s onwards. The route runs through twenty rooms including a Romanesque chapel and a banqueting hall, and the walk up from the town is steep enough that a shuttle bus exists for it.

  2. 13:15

    Lunch in the town

    Eat

    Vianden lives on visitors and the main street is lined with terraces along the river Our. Nothing here is expensive by Luxembourg standards.

  3. 14:30

    Maison Victor Hugo

    Visit

    Victor Hugo stayed here during his exile, most of it in 1871, in a house on the bridge over the Our that is now a small museum of the rooms he used, the drawings he made of the castle and the politics that put him there. It takes forty minutes and it is the best thing in the town after the castle.

  4. 15:30

    Télésiège

    Visit

    An old open chairlift that lifts you out of the valley in eleven minutes for the classic view of the castle on its ridge, with a terrace bar at the top. It runs from spring to autumn and is closed in winter and in bad weather.

With more time: If you would rather stay in the country than in a town, the Mullerthal east of here is walking country of sandstone gorges and mossy rock passages, and the wine villages along the Moselle are the other easy day out from the capital.

Day 4 in Luxembourg (city)

The cathedral, the national museum and the train

The last morning stays on the plateau, five minutes from wherever you slept, and finishes at the station or the airport bus with time to spare.

Both stops are within two hundred metres of each other. Take the museum first if you want the archaeology and the Roman mosaics; the cathedral needs twenty minutes and the crypt is the interesting part.

  1. 10:00

    National Museum of History and Art

    Culture

    The national collection, dug into the rock over several floors: prehistory and Roman Luxembourg at the bottom, coins, decorative arts and a good fine art section on the way up. Free on Thursday evenings and quiet on most mornings.

  2. 12:15

    Notre Dame Cathedral

    Religious

    A Jesuit church of 1613 promoted to cathedral in 1870, with a black marble crypt holding the grand ducal family and two bronze lions at the door. Outside stands the Golden Lady, a war memorial taken down by the German occupiers in 1940 and put back up in 1985 after the pieces turned up under a football stand.

  3. 13:15

    The tram, then the train or the plane

    Note

    The tram runs from the old town past the station and out to the airport road, and like everything else it is free. Twenty minutes to either, and no ticket to buy or validate.

With more time: If you are flying and have two hours to spare, the American military cemetery is a few minutes from the airport: 5,076 graves from the Battle of the Bulge in a beech wood, including General Patton's, and a German cemetery holding nearly eleven thousand men a short distance away at Sandweiler.

Before you go

Everything is free, which takes some getting used to

Luxembourg abolished fares on public transport in 2020. Trains, trams and buses across the entire country cost nothing, with no ticket, no tap and no barrier, second class only. That includes the tram past the station, the bus to the airport and the train to the Ardennes, which changes how a trip here works: there is no reason not to get on something and see where it goes.

The exception is first class on the railway, which still needs a ticket, and cross-border trains once they leave the country.

Getting in and getting around

Findel airport is 20 minutes from the centre by bus. Trains reach Luxembourg from Brussels in about three hours, from Trier in 50 minutes and from Metz in 45, and the TGV from Paris takes a little over two hours. The station is 20 minutes' walk south of the old town or a few minutes on the tram.

The city is small but vertical. Distances on the map are short and the climbs between the upper town and the valley are real, which is why there are two public lifts and a funicular. Use them: the glass lift from the Pfaffenthal and the one down to the Grund turn a hard climb into ninety seconds and cost nothing.

Three languages are official, Luxembourgish, French and German, and nearly half the residents are foreign nationals. French does most of the daily work, English is spoken almost everywhere, and nobody will mind whichever you open with.

Prices, and how to eat

This is the richest country in the European Union per head and restaurant prices reflect it. The saving grace is the set lunch: most kitchens do a two or three course plat du jour on weekdays for a fraction of what the same food costs at dinner, which is when to eat properly.

The food itself is French technique with German portions, plus a few local dishes worth trying: judd mat gaardebounen, smoked pork neck with broad beans, and gromperekichelcher, fried potato cakes sold at markets. The wine comes from the Moselle terraces half an hour east and is mostly white, dry and rarely exported.

When to go

May, June and September have the light for the gorge, which is the point of the city. The funfair takes over one end of town for a fortnight from late August, and the Christmas markets fill the squares from late November.

Museums mostly close on Monday and the Grand Ducal Palace opens to visitors only for a few weeks in July and August, while the family is away. A good deal of the city shuts on Sunday, when the residents drive out to the countryside.

What stays with people is the shape of the place. A city where you look down from a shopping street onto rooftops and a river, where a lift replaces a hill, and where a medieval fortress and a European court are ten minutes apart on a tram that nobody pays for.

It is also small enough to finish, which is rare in a capital. Four days here leaves you with the Ardennes to the north and the Moselle to the east, and the sense that the country is smaller than the trip you just took through it.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is public transport really free?
Yes, on every bus, tram and second class train inside the country, for residents and visitors alike, since 2020. There is no ticket to buy and no card to tap. First class on the railway still costs, and so does any journey that crosses the border.
Is four days too long for a city this size?
Not with a day out in it. Two days covers the fortress, the gorge and the museums comfortably. The third is what gets you Vianden, the Moselle or the Mullerthal, and the fourth stops the last morning being a rush for the airport.
How expensive is it?
Hotels and restaurants are at Swiss levels and everything else is not. Transport is free, several museums are free or nearly so, and the set lunch is a genuine bargain. Eating your main meal at midday is the single change that makes the most difference.
Which language should I use?
Whichever you have. Luxembourgish is the national language, French runs the shops and restaurants, German is in the newspapers, and English is spoken by most people under fifty. Almost half the population is foreign, so nobody assumes anything.
Can I combine it with Belgium or Germany?
Easily. Brussels is around three hours by train, Trier fifty minutes over the German border, and Metz forty-five minutes into France. Luxembourg sits in the corner where three countries meet, which is why it spent so long being fortified.