Kirchberg: how Luxembourg turned farmland into a European district

Until the early 1960s, the plateau facing Luxembourg City's old town held little more than fields. The arrival of the European institutions changed its destiny and gave the capital a new urban core.

From fortress to fields

Deep valleys cut the Kirchberg plateau off from the old town, although only about half a kilometre separates them as the crow flies. A Roman road linking Reims to Trier once crossed it, a route that the Parc du Réimerwee, designed by the landscape architect Peter Latz the early 1990s, still follows. In 1732-33, the Austrians built Fort Thüngen on the site of an older redoubt dating from 1688, naming it after Adam Sigmund von Thüngen. After the 1867 Treaty of London, dismantling began in 1870, and only three towers, known as the "three acorns", and the first casemate survived. For the following century, the plateau remained an agricultural area, largely detached from the life of the capital below.

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The European turning point

Luxembourg became the seat of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, and further institutions followed after the merger of the ECSC, EEC and Euratom executives. Office space in the historic centre and the station district soon ran short. In 1961, the State acquired 365 hectares of the plateau and created the Fonds d'Urbanisation et d'Aménagement du Plateau de Kirchberg, which borrowed with a State guarantee, serviced the land and sold plots to repay the loan. The Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge, known as the Red Bridge and inaugurated in 1966, gave the district its founding link to the city. That year also saw the commissioning of the 22-storey Alcide De Gasperi Tower for the European Parliament Secretariat, the first skyscraper built in Luxembourg. The European Parliament held its first part-session in a new Kirchberg chamber on 12 February 1973.

Banks, culture and housing

In the early 1990s, the head offices of several banks, mainly German, settled at the eastern end of the plateau. New planning guidelines adopted in 1991 shifted through traffic onto an eastern motorway bypass, turned the expressway into Avenue John F. Kennedy and made housing a priority. Culture followed, with the Philharmonie by Christian de Portzamparc on Place de l'Europe (2005), the Mudam museum of modern art by I.M. Pei (2006) and the opening of the Musée Dräi Eechelen within the restored Fort Thüngen (2012). Today, almost two-thirds of the 62-metre-wide avenue serve public transport and active mobility. According to the Fonds Kirchberg, the district counted about 6,200 residents and 44,400 workers in 2023, and its projections for 2042 point to 33,900 residents and 69,900 workers.

This article was written by artificial intelligence and reviewed by our editors.