Luxembourg

Luxembourg Became the First Country to Make All Public Transport Free in 2020 – and It Still Is

Buses, trams, and domestic trains: all free, all the time, for everyone including visitors. You board without a ticket anywhere in the country. This is not a promotional scheme with an expiry date; it is ongoing national policy, funded by a government whose GDP per capita is consistently among the highest in the world and which concluded that the friction of charging modest fares was not worth maintaining the infrastructure for. In practice, this means you can travel the entire country – Luxembourg City to Vianden to the Moselle wine villages to the Mullerthal hiking trails – without paying a cent for transport. For a visitor doing day trips, this is genuinely significant.

Luxembourg is roughly 2,586 square kilometres and 650,000 people, sitting where Belgium, France, and Germany meet. It is the only remaining sovereign grand duchy in the world, a founding EU member, and the seat of the European Court of Justice. The capital city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site built on sheer sandstone cliffs above two river valleys.

Luxembourg City

The Chemin de la Corniche follows the old city walls above the Alzette River valley – described with some accuracy as the most beautiful balcony in Europe. Below: the red-roofed Grund quarter clustering around the river. Across the gorge: continuing sandstone cliff. The view is genuinely remarkable for a capital city of 120,000 people.

The Casemates du Bock are 17 kilometres of defensive tunnels cut 40 metres into those sandstone cliffs, explored with a paper map and no guided tour required. The tunnels housed soldiers, horses, and a slaughterhouse in their operational days. The panoramic glass lift from Pfaffenthal in the lower town to the upper city ramparts is free and covers the full bluff height in about 90 seconds.

I.M. Pei’s Mudam contemporary art museum is built into the ruins of Fort Thungen – the same architect as the Louvre pyramid, working in a very different register. The building alone justifies the visit.

Vianden

An hour northeast by free bus, Vianden sits below one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Western Europe. Victor Hugo spent time in exile here; his house is a small museum that is actually interesting rather than merely dutiful. The town is small enough to walk in a morning, with the castle as the logical destination.

Mullerthal

Luxembourg’s “Little Switzerland” has 112 kilometres of waymarked hiking trails through forested sandstone country with narrow gorges and small waterfalls. All of it accessible by free public transport. The terrain is genuinely beautiful and undervisited by most international tourists who pass through Luxembourg in transit.

The Moselle Valley and Schengen

Luxembourg’s wine country produces Riesling, Pinot Gris, and Cremant (very good, at a fraction of Champagne prices). The village of Schengen, where the 1985 agreement on free movement within Europe was signed, sits on the river with a small museum – one of the more quietly consequential diplomatic sites in post-war European history and visited by almost nobody.

Food

Judd mat Gaardebounen (smoked pork collar with broad beans) is the national dish. Luxembourg’s large Portuguese immigrant community has introduced pasteis de nata to bakeries across the capital, and they are reliably good.