Place Guillaume II, the Knuedler, where almost everything starts

If you visit Luxembourg City, you’ll end up crossing Place Guillaume II sooner or later, planned or not. The town’s Hôtel de Ville and the visitor centre share it, this is where you buy tickets for half the old town, and it’s where almost every guided walk starts. How the official walk compares with a free walking tour in Luxembourg I explain separately. It isn’t the prettiest square in the city, but it’s the most useful, and it has two pieces most people walk straight past. This is how I’d use it.

From Franciscan friary to public square

From the mid-13th century this site was home to the Franciscans’ church and friary, according to the city tourist office. They gave the square the name everyone uses, the Knuedler, from the knot, the «Knued», in the cord the friars wore round their waists. In 1797 the French confiscated the friary and some of its property, and over the following decades the whole complex was razed and the square laid out afresh.

What I find most interesting is that the friary never entirely left. It stayed on the square as stone, inside the building that closes one side of it.

A town hall built from the friary

The Hôtel de Ville was built between 1830 and 1838 in neoclassical style, mostly from the stone of the old Franciscan friary, which had stood until 1829. That’s how the city tourist office tells it, and I like the continuity, because it explains why the building sits so naturally on a plot that had been occupied for six centuries.

Since 1931 the main entrance has been flanked by two bronze lions by the Luxembourg sculptor Auguste Trémont. They’re the first thing I’d look at. Inside are the city administration and the council chamber, and the official websites I checked don’t list tours of the interior, so I wouldn’t count on going in. At dusk, with the front lit up, it looks its best from the square.

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William II on horseback, and the twelve cantons

The official name honours William II of Orange-Nassau, King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg from 1840 to 1849, who presides over the square on a bronze horse. The rider is by the French artist Antonin Mercié and the horse by Victor Peter. Have a look at the plinth, which carries the arms of the House of Orange-Nassau, of the city and of the Grand Duchy’s twelve cantons. The tourist office adds a detail I didn’t expect, that an exact copy of the monument was put up in The Hague.

It’s not an empty gesture. William II gave the country its first constitutional charter in 1841, and the government’s portal quotes his line «Je veux que le Luxembourg soit gouverné par les Luxembourgeois», I want Luxembourg to be governed by the Luxembourgers. A year before he died he also granted the Grand Duchy its first parliamentary constitution, one of the most liberal in Europe at the time according to the tourist office.

The tourist office, your base

At number 30 is the Luxembourg City Tourist Office. It’s open seven days a week, bank holidays included, with shorter hours on Sundays, and shuts only on 1 January and on Christmas Day itself. This is where you buy guided tours of the Bock Casemates and the Pétrusse, and in summer the palace tours, which leave from outside the door.

The office also starts its guided version of the Wenzel walk here, a three-hour affair. If you have last-minute questions about what’s open, this is the place to ask in person. If you want to understand how national power works here, the building to visit is the Grand Ducal Palace, just round the corner, with the Chamber of Deputies beside it.

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Markets, concerts and the Octave

On Wednesday and Saturday mornings the square fills with the Stater Maart, the city’s regional produce market. Its times, and the capital’s other markets and flea markets, are in my guide to Luxembourg’s markets.

The tourist office also says the square hosts open-air concerts and festivals through the year. The big one is the Mäertchen of the Octave of Our Lady, which in 2027 runs from 17 April to 2 May, with the cathedral at the centre of the pilgrimage. Come then and you’ll see the Knuedler at its most crowded. The rest of the year, I’d book whatever I still needed at the tourist office and carry on to Place d’Armes, two streets away, which is the square for sitting at a café table.

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

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