The Gare, the district that grew up around the station

Almost everyone who arrives in Luxembourg by train walks through the Gare, and most drag their case straight across it without looking up. That’s a shame. In roughly a square kilometre you get one of the country’s most handsome avenues, 19th-century townhouses now used as embassies, a rose garden and a Second World War memorial that very few visitors find.

From a wooden station to a city district

It all began in 1859 with a first station built entirely of wood, according to the tourist office. The present Moselle Baroque building came in the early 20th century, and the city dates its completion to 1912. Hotels and firms moved in around it, from the champagne house Mercier to the cigarette maker Heintz van Landewyck.

The district wasn’t even part of the capital until 1920; it belonged to the municipality of Hollerich. Only when the fortress came down after 1867 could the Plateau Bourbon be built on and Avenue de la Liberté laid out. The city now puts it at 105.26 hectares with 11,513 residents at the end of 2023, and the Plateau Bourbon sits in the buffer zone of the UNESCO site.

The practical side of the station itself, left luggage, Wi-Fi and tickets, is covered in my guide to Luxembourg railway station. This page is about the neighbourhood.

Three Gares in one

The tourist office splits it into three areas, and that’s how I’d tackle it. First the station area, all shops, offices and traffic at any hour. Then the Pétrusse side, with elegant 19th-century houses, some of them embassies. Finally Avenue de la Liberté, which the LCTO rates among the finest streets in Luxembourg.

Along it you’ll find Place de Paris, with its Thursday market (I cover it with the others in markets in Luxembourg), and Place des Martyrs, known as the Rousegärtchen, a 5,684 m² rose garden where the city is reworking the park. Look out too for the head office of the state savings bank, the BCEE, and number 19, the former headquarters of the steel giant ARBED. If early 20th-century architecture is your thing, it’s the most rewarding street outside the old town.

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Place de Paris and the Bourbon Plateau

Place de Paris is where I’d stop for a coffee. The tourist office says it became a pedestrian zone in 1986, and it’s lined with restaurants whose terraces fill up in summer, a short walk from the station. The small Thursday market is the best excuse to plan your arrival on that day.

The Bourbon Plateau is the ground the whole district stands on, and its name tells the story. It comes from the old Fort Bourbon, one of the defences of the so-called Diedenhofener Front, the Thionville side of the fortress, alongside Fort Elisabeth, Fort Wallis and Fort Wedell. Once dismantling began in 1867 the plateau was opened to town planning, which is why the streets here run straighter than anything in the Ville Haute.

Is the Gare worth a wander?

It is, if you go about it in the right order. I’d come over from the Ville Haute on the Passerelle, a 24-arch stone viaduct that gained a suspended walkway for pedestrians and cyclists during the 2018-2020 works. Then down Avenue de la Liberté to the station, and back over the Adolphe Bridge of 1903, which the tourist office calls the “new bridge” to the viaduct’s “old” one.

In between, Place de Strasbourg has a playground, and the edge of the Pétrusse gives you the view across the valley to the ramparts.

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Villa Pauly and wartime memory

At 57 Boulevard de la Pétrusse stands Villa Pauly, a 1920s house by the architect Mathias Martin. During the occupation, from 1940 to 1945, it was the Gestapo’s headquarters, and the deportation of Luxembourg’s Jewish population was organised from here. It has been a national monument since 1989 and houses the associations representing resistance fighters, forced conscripts and victims of the Shoah.

It opens Tuesday to Friday from 13:00 to 16:30 and by appointment, and is closed at weekends, on public holidays and from 24 December to 6 January. For me it’s the visit that gives the district its weight, and it ties in with Luxembourg in the Second World War. If you’d rather have a guide, the LCTO runs a two-hour wartime walk through the city, with a private guide from €150 for groups of up to 20.

What the brochures leave out

The Gare is the capital’s most cosmopolitan and lively district, and also its most debated. In 2024 the city itself published residents’ recordings describing a place where “day and night there’s always something going on”, alongside complaints about insecurity and litter. It isn’t dangerous, but the Foreign Office flags the main station for pickpockets.

My approach is simple. By day I’d wander freely; at night I’d keep to the main streets, especially walking back to a hotel. If you’re weighing up a stay here, the pros and cons are in hotels near Luxembourg station.

If you are short on time, see the best tours in Luxembourg and pick one that fits your day.

Getting around from here

Tram T1 stops outside the station at Gare Centrale, running north to Hamilius, Kirchberg and the airport and south through Bonnevoie to the Cloche d’Or. On Friday and Saturday nights the CN1 City Night Bus also runs until 03:30. It’s all free, which makes the Gare an easy base for Luxembourg City and the rest of the country. Come in on the direct TGV from Paris, 2 hours 10 minutes, and you step straight out into it.

Where the bus does not go, a car does: compare car hire in Luxembourg before you arrive rather than at the desk.

If you still need a way in, check the best ticket deals to Luxembourg from where you are.