Grund
The medieval valley below the old town. The Alzette runs through it, the bistros stay open late, the old brewery is now a nightlife quarter.
Below the plateau, the Grund is the medieval valley the city forgot to modernise — a village folded inside the capital, along the Alzette. From the old town you drop into it by the Saint-Esprit lift, cut straight through the rock, or on foot down the ramparts.
The Chemin de la Corniche, the promenade built on 17th-century Spanish and French walls above it, was called “the most beautiful balcony in Europe” by the Luxembourg writer Batty Weber, and it earns the title at dusk. Down in the valley: the Neumünster Abbey, a Benedictine monastery turned prison turned cultural centre; the Wenzel wall, a thousand years of fortification you can walk in an afternoon; and, a little further along in Clausen, the old Mousel brewery — beer made here since 1511 — now the Rives de Clausen, where the terraces fill after dark.
It is a ten-minute walk down from our two Ville-Haute houses and, more to the point, a ten-minute walk back up — best done slowly, with a stop on the Corniche. Base yourself at Relais Louvigny or Guillaume Suites on the plateau, and the Grund becomes your evening.
