the state of saarland has a very special neighbor - the little country luxembourg. only half a million inhabitants live here, so you can imagine what a tiny country it is. its capital is luxembourg city, which already has about 110 000 citizens living there ( but actually feels a lot bigger due to the fact that several european institutions are having their headquarters here and many people commute for work and invigorate the city with their presence - it seriously felt like a city such as frankfurt or even a tiny berlin! ).
my mother had heard that you could buy cigarettes for less money in luxembourg, so she said that for that fact alone she would want to visit, haha - as it turned out they were not that much cheaper and she ended up NOT buying any - the downside of smoking :P ). luxembourg was never really on my radar until i once saw a tv documentation about it and was intrigued by the beautiful inner core of luxembourg city. that was what i wanted to see basically. unfortunately we didn't really enter the core but more or less just overlooked it from above - due to several little mishappenings that stole us a looooot of time ( parkometer problems including forgetting car keys, coughcough, a total delay of about 1 1/2 hour |D ).
anyway, we still managed to see a lot of the city and visited a few very beautiful churches ( why am i always drawn to them so intensely? ) and my overall conclusion of this city is: it's a very contradictory and quite a bit overwhelming city. i absolutely LOVED it, but after walking around so much and seeing all the hustle & bustle of this city i really was depleted at the end of the day, haha. i like visiting cities because there is always so much interesting architecture to see and so much history to learn, but i also am glad when i get to return to a more calm environment again, to restore my sanity ( preferably my flat or somewhere less populated :) ). anyways, despite luxembourg being an actual small city, it still felt huge and let me tell you, quite expensive. but i guess that's the price of being a very international city with lots of money force behind it. it's a banker city after all!
let's dive right into the pictures.
one of the first things i noticed about the city is that there was a lot of construction activity going on. it was loud and a little bit chaotic to me.
i kind of liked the contemporary architecture, brutalism meets minimalism & supermodernism and there was the occasional historic building thrown in, which created an extraordinary mix.
it's strange how well those differences worked together!
a lot of art nouveau houses could be found in there as well. always a delight for me.
colourful macarons in a shop window.
absolutely adored these house fronts.
the outside of the notre-dame cathedral. it's the only cathedral in the country of luxembourg and you can basically view it as the country's state church. it's decked out very luxuriously as you will see in a few seconds.
the cathedral is mainly gothic in execution but has a lot of renaissance elements as well! the windows, as in every gothic church, are brightly coloured works of art. i can never get enough of this.
beautifully decorated & embellished organ gallery.
the columns had these very interesting patterns that reminded me more of art deco than of anything else.
don't you think that these high arches turn a building into a rather glorious and elevated structure?
decked out in gold mosaics.
the light inside the cathedral was absolutely stunning, especially in the altar area.
the light-flooded quire. it was pure splendor.
comforter of the afflicted, a statue of the blessed mother, which is part of the yearly marian pilgrimage called 'octave'.
loved how the light illuminated the balustrade.
down below the cathedral's main hall there was a little chapel in the crypt. it had its own source of illumination going on.
feast for the eyes, the shadows these glass windows cast are what's striking me the most.
the back of the crypt chapel. it leads you to the actual crypt where the graves of the grand-ducal's family are situated. luxembourg is a grand duchy, the last remaining worldwide. it's a democratic country but headed by a constitutional monarch. which is pretty interesting to me since luxembourg is one of the founding members of the european union and a lot of its institutions and main agencies are situated here.
the crypt. loved the gold mosaics. it's a little sterile, but in a very neat way!
detail shot of the mosaic ceiling.
lovely religious group.
i think this is the main entry gate into the cathedral, but we used this one to exit it.
after our cathedral visit i wanted to head back to the car to throw in some more money into one of the parkometers. i used this opportunity to take some more pictures of the clashing surroundings. ( as i wrote above i needed to take a retour again, because my brain is stupid and forgetful, so i passed by these buildings a second time as well :P )
the structure of this building made me fall in love with it!
it's actually a hotel: le royal luxembourg.
luxembourg city was once a very heavily fortificated city, the casemates ( part of the bock - a promontory used as a natural fortification ) are still a relict of this history. of course they don't serve their military purposes anymore and are instead used for gardening purposes. in the back you can see the encased adolphe bridge, currently under renovating construction.
casemate walls.
promontory rocks.
it was also really nice to see historic elements incorporated into modern buildings.
the glass windows of this building were a canvas of scribblings. would've loved to enter the cafe behind it, but we had other plans.
great message with a slight mind-bending outcome.
pt. 2 coming soon!
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