Luxembourg – Luxembourg: Caves & City

Highlights

Views
Notre Dame Cathedral
Transportation
Pétrusse Casements
Bock Casements
Grand Ducal Palace
Bridges
Beautiful Buildings

We continue exploring the splendid Luxembourg, this post features Casements, the city views and so much more! Travel note: Luxembourg is a great European stop – right on major train lines it is often overlooked. It is beautiful, clean, easy to get around and is somewhere you should add to your list!

The Grund from last post is in a valley, while the rest of Luxembourg is built on the higher plains, which offer incredible views of the valley. These views include lush greenery, views of La Passerelle Bridge and the Notre Dame.

After going to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Montréal and Paris, this one was MUCH smaller and simpler, but still pretty in the middle of the city. It is sort of hidden – from the back you can see the steeples, but from the front – it looks like a pretty simple facade. Although groundbreaking happened in 1613 it wasn’t complete until 1938 and offers gothic and baroque architecture styles.

As quickly mentioned in the first post public transportation is free in Luxembourg – that’s right free. I guess that’s what you get when you are the richest country. It was clean and efficient, and the free included everything – buses, elevators, funiculars and trams. It made getting around super easy.

We did a tour of the Pétrusse Casements – which was really neat. A lot of people touched them, starting with the Spaniards, then the Austrian’s and then the Britts. They dismantled some of the Casement’s but there are still 17kms. It is still coined “the longest casements in the world”.

As of 1994 its a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They have been welcoming tours of the caves/casements for a long time. It was really interesting – we started at the top, and ended up in the valley as we worked our way down. Fun was had, and it was interesting that at certain places vegetation was growing in the dark cold caves!

Next we went to the famous Bock Casements, which started with a castle being built on top back in 983. In 1745 was when the stairs, pathways and other elements started throughout the stone forming the casements. It was designed and built by Austrian designers and is 1100m squared.

As their tourism site says – Rocks with a View – and one helluva view at that! There have been royalty over the years visit the casements, and for something quite cheap to explore – it offered great photos, and stunning views of the valley.

Grand Ducal Palace is one of the spots said to visit, but we just admired the outside. It is the official residence of the Grand Duke of Luxembourg Henri – and tours are only offered during the summer so we missed it traveling in October. The building dates back to 1572.

There are many bridges across the valley of Luxembourg – including the Red Bridge (you can guess – its the red one), La Passerelle Bridge (middle two photos) and Adolphe Bridge. Passerelle has 24 arches and towers 45 metres above the valley.

Luxembourg was truly something special – just everything around was beautiful – and we enjoyed our time there. Below you can see some photos of statues & monuments, buildings, the back of Notre Dame Cathedral and even their Stock exchange (middle photos) is beautiful.