City of Luxembourg: its Old Quarters and Fortifications
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How it came to be
Luxembourg lies where two major Roman roads crossed. In 963 Sigefroid, a count from the Moselle valley, built a castle on the Rocher du Bock, which he obtained in an exchange with the Abbey of St Maximin of Trier, and the town grew from the settlement of his servants and soldiers around it. A second wall was built at the end of the 12th century and a third in the 15th century, enclosing the lower town of Grund.
By the 16th century the fortress had become a prize that passed between the House of Burgundy, the Habsburgs, the French and Spanish kings and the Holy Roman Emperors. The Spanish added new redoubts in 1671-84, and after their successful siege of 1684 the French rebuilt the defences on a large scale under Vauban in 1684-97. From 1715 the Austrians added forts and casemates linked by tunnels, and the city earned the name Gibraltar of the North.
From 1815 it was a fortress of the German Confederation garrisoned by the Prussian army, until the Treaty of London of 1867 confirmed the Grand Duchy's perpetual neutrality and ordered the fortifications demolished. Dismantling more than 24 km of underground defences took sixteen years, yet twelve of the 28 gates survive, along with 1,100 square metres of casemates in the Bock. The city was inscribed in 1994.
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