Chemin de la Corniche

The writer Batty Weber called this "the most beautiful balcony in Europe," and standing at the railing looking down over the Grund and the Alzette river, it's not a hard claim to believe. You're walking along the top of the ramparts the Spanish and then the French built here in the seventeenth century — a wall that runs from the Bock rock to the old Holy Ghost citadel and once looked straight down on anyone trying to approach from the valley.

When the fortress was dismantled after 1867, this stretch of wall stayed — but its parapet, pierced with loopholes for muskets, mostly did not, and the steps at the steep parts were levelled into a path. That is why you get such a dramatic view today: houses stacked on the hillside, the tower of Neumünster Abbey's church, the river curling below. Soldiers here saw it only through slits. What kept enemies out now just frames a walk.

The path runs along the edge of the old town, connecting several of the historic viewpoints over the lower town, and it's one of the best ways to actually understand the shape of Luxembourg City — a fortress built on cliffs above two rivers, with the old town sitting high and the working, residential Grund quarter tucked into the valley underneath it.

Come back at sunset if you can — the light on the rooftops of the Grund from up here is one of the reasons people fall for this city.