Get app
Luxembourg in a nutshell: eight friendly questions about its essentials. No need to be an expert: everyone can play along and learn something new.
Weekend visitor 0–3 · Valley walker 4–6 · Honorary Luxembourger 7–8
Pick one
Luxembourg is about 82 km long and 57 km wide, so a car can cross it from top to bottom in well under two hours. Even so, it has room for wooded hills, deep river valleys, rolling farmland and a capital city perched on rocky cliffs.
Photo: Kelisi at English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Pick one
Belgium wraps around Luxembourg's west and north, Germany lies to the east, and France to the south, along the shortest of the three borders, about 73 km long. Luxembourg has no coast at all: Belgium lies between it and the North Sea.
Photo: MMFE, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Pick one
The Mullerthal is full of craggy rocks, thick forests, small caves and many little streams, a bit like a mini version of the Swiss landscape. Its highest point, though, is only 414 metres above sea level, and its main town, Echternach, is the oldest town in Luxembourg.
Photo: Vincent de Groot, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Pick one
Just before 1914, tiny Luxembourg was the eighth-biggest steel producer in the world, and workers came from Germany, Italy and elsewhere to work in its steelworks. The last blast furnace closed in 1997, and since then steel has been made there by melting down scrap metal with electricity.
Photo: Les Meloures at Luxembourgish Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 1.0.
Pick one
The boat lay on a river right where Luxembourg, France and Germany meet, and five countries signed the agreement on board. The Schengen Area that grew from it now covers almost 30 European countries, where you can usually drive from one country into the next without stopping at a border post.
Photo: Zinneke, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Pick one
About 23 km of these tunnels, called casemates, once ran under the fortress, which was so strong that Luxembourg was nicknamed the 'Gibraltar of the North'. Most of the fortress was pulled down after 1867, but parts of the tunnels survive and are now part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Photo: Unknown prior to 1867, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Pick one
Siegfried is said to have founded Luxembourg in 963, and in the legend Melusina magically built his castle on a rocky cliff the morning after their wedding, asking only for one day a week alone. When he cried out at the sight of her fish's tail, she and her bath sank deep into the earth.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Pick one
Luxembourgers call him De Kleeschen, and he wears a tall bishop's hat and carries a bishop's staff. He brings presents for children who have been good, while his companion, the Houseker, gives twigs to those who have misbehaved.
Photo: Ing.Mgr. Jozef Kotulič, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.
Paste the code into your page. The player fits itself in, and every vote counts in Votur.
On WordPress, Ghost or Squarespace? Just paste the link of this page into your post.
This is how it looks
Also fun
