9/19/24: Luxembourg City's Kirchberg Plateau

Luxembourg City's European Union's modern, blue glass towers were built on a hilltop on the Kirchberg Plateau. The area was also home to concert halls, museums, and chunky remnants of fortifications. When Luxembourg was selected as one of the locations for some EU institutions, it had a significant impact on the city's development. A new district was created on the Kirchberg Plateau to accommodate the complex which includes the Secretariat of the European Parliament, the European Court of Auditors, the Court of Justice for the European Communities, etc. For a long time, Kirchberg was simply an administrative part of the city but it has become a district in its own right with compelling contemporary architecture and works of art in public spaces. 

Even though Steven and I are not generally admirers of modern art, our first stop was at MUDAM, the modern art museum, because of its groundbreaking design by IM Pei, best known for his glass pyramid entrance to the Louvre in Paris. Here was his innovative access to the MUDAM.

It was interesting how the museum was built right atop the city's old fortifications.

In all the museums we've visited, we've never seen security guards all dressed in jeans. I wonder if that was because this was a contemporary art museum versus a more traditional art museum. 

A view from the gallery:

In the downstairs gallery was what looked like a lottery ball machine that spat out different colored balls at regular intervals. However, instead of finding out whether we'd won a million euros, the balls that spat out questioned the likelihood of random events happening - the risk of being killed by falling furniture, the risk of being killed by a rat, the odds of an author getting a work published, the odds of winning a Mega Millions Jackpot, and one that hit far too close to home for me, the odds of a person ever being diagnosed with cancer, etc! NO numbers were given for each possibility - the balls just posed the questions.

Click on the pictures so you can more easily read some of them in the larger format.

On the wall was a color-coded map of the world that depicted social contagions and phantom phenomena. The colors represented the number of people affected by each contagion - real or imagined. 

I could have stayed for an hour or more to read lots of the events but Steven was less interested. Being Canadian to my core, I focused on the 1990s Halifax Perfume Scare that 100,000 people bought into. A scent-free movement began in Halifax in 1990 by chemical-free activists who were concerned that perfumes, like pesticides, were poisoning the planet. An anti-scent ban took effect across Nova Scotia in February 2000 designating many work settings and all government buildings to be scent-free zones. A month later, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a boy for assault: his 'crime' was wearing cologne and Dippity Doo hair gel if you can imagine!

Since you're also a fan of New Mexico, Sarah, I thought you might enjoy knowing about the Flying Saucer Crash conspiracy theory that has attracted the attention of over a million people. For certain believers, after a flying saucer was purported to have crashed in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1947, the US government recovered the craft and has since kept it hidden from the public. With the story widely believed to be true by millions around the world, so-called informants state they're retired Air Force officers and describe the craft as protruding from the desert!

Steven and I joked that we were glad we'd come all this way to look at the motorized carts on rails - not!

Behind the museum was 1730 Fort Thüngen from 1730, a twin-towered extension of the plateau's huge complex of Vauban fortifications. After the fort was demolished in 1870 and 1874, only the so-called Three Acorns round towers, and the foundation walls, uncovered in 1991, remained in good condition. The fort contained a museum about Luxembourg's historic defenses which didn't appeal to either of us. 

Place de l'Europe or Europe Square:

The city's Philharmonic Concert Hall was next to the MUDAM.

I did not understand the artistic meaning of the fake sheep atop the Philharmonic/MUDAM transit station. Any takers on that one?!

After discovering a trail that would take us from the Plateau to the center of the city, we backtracked to the fort, began hiking, and almost immediately came across the ruins of another fort. We were surprised it was just a stone's throw from Thüngen. 

In the distance were the distinctive spires of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame we'd first admired two days before.

We were not impressed when we'd walked a fair distance and came to a dead end and had to backtrack once again all the way to the Kirchberg Plateau!

Since we had plenty of time, we sat soaking up the sun and views from Fort Obergrünewald before taking a bus back to the city to collect our bags and from there to the airport, all for free!

Our first sight of Palermo, Sicily was this 'I Love NY' sign - we just had to laugh!

Next post: Our impressions of Luxembourg.

Posted on Halloween, 2024 from Sousse, Tunisia, a week before heading home. The last few days have been especially relaxing in this enjoyable coastal city and the country's third largest. As we did in Luxembourg, Steven and I have saved the capital for last. Please take care of yourself and your loved ones and, if you're American, remember to cast your ballot in next week's very important election.