Luxembourg's theatres and concert venues, from opera to rock

For a country this small, Luxembourg has a surprising amount of live theatre and music. To me it’s among the most overlooked parts of a trip here, because most people stop at the casemates and the viewpoints and never think of spending an evening in a theatre. Below are the venues that genuinely programme for the public, with addresses, capacities where they publish them and how to get tickets. The Philharmonie in Luxembourg and the arts centre at Neumünster Abbey have pages of their own, so I only mention them here.

The Grand Théâtre, opera and dance by Kirchberg

Locals also call it the New Theatre. It went up between 1960 and 1964 for the city’s thousandth anniversary, designed by the Parisian architect Alain Bourbonnais, and the tourist office notes that its materials and fittings came from seven European countries. You’ll find it at 1 rond-point Schuman, where Limpertsberg meets Kirchberg. After a major overhaul of the stage and technical kit, it has a main auditorium of 943 seats plus a studio, a flexible black box seating between 100 and 400.

It stages drama in several languages, opera and dance, and the city theatres describe it as their opera house, for both the classical and the contemporary repertoire. For an overseas visitor this is the venue I’d single out, because opera and ballet don’t depend on understanding Luxembourgish. The foyer opens an hour before curtain-up and performances start on time; once the doors close, latecomers wait for the interval.

Small theatres in the old town

The Théâtre des Capucins, at 9 place du Théâtre, is the other half of the city theatres, and its past is one of the odder stories in the old town. From 1623 to 1795 the building was a Capuchin friary. French Revolutionary troops then used it as a powder store, food depot and garrison bakery, and the friary church served as the municipal theatre from 1869 to 1964. Restored, it reopened early in 1985 with 269 seats for its own productions and touring companies.

Round the corner at 4 Grand-Rue, the Théâtre du Centaure, founded in 1973, has occupied a cave beneath the old town since 1985, now a 50-seat auditorium. And at 14 rue du Puits there’s the Kasemattentheater, set up by Tun Deutsch on 11 December 1964 to bring avant-garde theatre to a wider audience than the intellectual bourgeoisie.

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The Théâtre National and Théâtre Le 10

The Théâtre National du Luxembourg was founded in 1996 and opened on 1 October 1997 with Strindberg’s «Ein Traumspiel», directed by Frank Hoffmann. It sits at 194 route de Longwy in Merl and works in Luxembourgish, French and German. Adult tickets cost €20 to €30, and the phone box office is staffed Monday to Friday from 9:00 to 17:00. Concessions are only available at the counter, not online. Over in Neudorf, the Théâtre Le 10 is the neighbourhood theatre, with its own programme.

Where can you see a gig in the capital?

Classical music aside, I’d have two names on my list. The first is Rotondes in Bonnevoie, a pair of round buildings 52 metres across that were put up to house and repair steam locomotives. They were the headquarters of the 2007 European Capital of Culture. Today Rotonde 1 holds the main stage, a gallery and a hall for talks, and Rotonde 2 a café and the Klub, the gig room. The address is 3 place des Rotondes, by the Gare.

The second is den Atelier, at 54 rue de Hollerich, a former industrial hall that the tourist office ranks among the country’s main stages, with local and international acts. The street has restaurants and bars for before or after, and if you want to stay out later, my guide to nightlife in Luxembourg picks up from there.

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Esch and Belval, where the south turns it up

Esch-sur-Alzette has two venues worth the train. The Kulturfabrik fills the old municipal slaughterhouse at 116 rue de Luxembourg. It closed in 1979, a theatre company and several bands moved in during the early 1980s, and it now has a large concert hall, a cinema, a bistro, an exhibition space and studios. Tickets are sold online from each event’s page. The Escher Theater, on the Brillplaz, puts on around fifty theatre, dance and music performances a season, mostly in French and German, and has made young audiences a priority since 2018.

At Belval, on the old steelworks, the Rockhal has been the country’s biggest music venue since 2005. Officially it’s the Centre de Musiques Amplifiées, and it splits crowds between a 6,500-capacity main hall, a standing-only Club holding 1,200 and the 200-capacity Floor. Second-class rail travel from the capital is free, so the trip costs you nothing but time.

Tickets, languages and the rest of the country

Every venue sells online. The city theatres’ box office opens Monday to Friday from 13:00 to 18:30, or 14:00 to 17:00 in school holidays, plus an evening box office an hour before each show. Any booking left unpaid five working days before the performance is cancelled automatically. To buy face to face, the tourist office on Place Guillaume II sells tickets for the national Luxembourgticket network, between 9:00 and 18:00 from Monday to Saturday, and 11:00 to 16:00 on Sundays.

Outside the Luxembourg-Esch axis, the CAPE in Ettelbruck, open since 2000 at 1 place Marie-Adélaïde, shares its building with the northern conservatoire, and the Trifolion in Echternach, on Porte Saint-Willibrord, hosts around 200 events a year by its own count. Dudelange has the opderschmelz, with jazz, world music and contemporary theatre. My rule for all of them is the same. Check the language of the performance before you pay, because a single season here can mix plays in several languages.

So you do not lose the morning at the ticket office, browse tickets and tours in Luxemburgo on GetYourGuide.

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Before you fix your dates, compare tickets to Luxembourg: the same journey can cost very different amounts from one day to the next.