Casino Luxembourg, contemporary art where nobody places a bet

First, the name, because it catches everyone out. Casino Luxembourg is not a casino. It’s the capital’s contemporary art centre, the Forum d’art contemporain, and since 1996 it has occupied the 19th-century building of the former Casino Bourgeois, a few steps from Notre-Dame Cathedral. Nobody gambles here. You come to see what artists are making right now.

An art centre, not a museum

The distinction matters if you want to know what to expect. The Casino doesn’t collect or conserve; it stages exhibitions, mostly solo shows built around younger artists, and often commissions new work for its rooms. It calls itself a laboratory, and I think that’s the right word. If you’re after a modern art collection with established names, head to Mudam in Kirchberg. If you want to see what’s brewing before it reaches the museums, this is the place.

The ground floor brings together exhibition rooms, the InfoLab library, the ArtBookBox bookshop and the “Aquarium”, a glass pavilion used for concerts, theatre and performance. The first floor is given over entirely to temporary exhibitions. There’s also a restaurant, Public House, with its own entrance beside the Aquarium, open Tuesday to Saturday for lunch and dinner.

What’s on at the moment

As of September 2026, the programme brings together four shows in the FORA cycle, all running until 10 January 2027. Notes on Weathering has been open since 1 March, The Hearth Room since 11 September, and Pipes have their ways and Bébé Trek since 25 September. Shows change every few months, so I’d check the website before you go, though with free entry you’re hardly risking much.

Some works have stayed for good. On the rue Notre-Dame front, Jacques Charlier sandblasted a 4.60 by 3.16 metre patch of stone in 1997, La Surface de l’Art, to reveal the building under more than a century of grime. In May 2014 the Swiss duo Lang/Baumann hung Beautiful Steps #10 on the north façade, a white balcony shaped like a truncated pyramid, three metres deep. And on the restaurant ceiling, Nedko Solakov handwrote a thought in 2003 that, by his own admission, didn’t turn out as profound as planned.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Luxemburgo before prices climb.

Free, with a free guided tour

Entry is always free. On Thursdays at 19:00 and Sundays at 15:00 a mediator leads a tour of the current exhibition, also free, and on the last Friday of each month at 11:00 there’s a session for parents with babies up to 24 months. Booked groups pay €100 an hour, up to 20 people, with the language (German, Luxembourgish, French or English) agreed in advance.

That’s why it goes into every plan I make for free things to do in Luxembourg. It’s one of the few visits in the centre where you don’t need to do any sums.

Worth it if contemporary art isn’t your thing?

With free entry, I’d go in anyway. The worst that can happen is that twenty minutes later you decide it’s not for you and carry on to Place d’Armes. The best is that one room changes your afternoon. And even if you don’t go in, the façade with the Charlier and Lang/Baumann works is visible from the street, a short walk from the cathedral.

Once your dates are set, check which hotels are still free in Luxemburgo before prices climb.

Opening hours and getting there

It opens on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays from 11:00 to 19:00, and on Thursdays until 21:00. It’s closed on Tuesdays and on 1 January, 24 December and 25 December. Take that Tuesday closure seriously, because the national tourism website has listed it as open on a Tuesday, while the centre’s own site and the city tourist office both say it isn’t.

The address is 41 rue Notre-Dame, with a second entrance at 7 boulevard Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is the one with the lift. The ground floor is step-free, but the first floor is stairs only. The tram stops at Hamilius and every bus line serving the centre comes close. From here Villa Vauban is a few streets away, and the two make a good art afternoon with two centuries between them.

If you would rather have a local show you round, book a guided tour in Casino Luxembourg and choose by the reviews.

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