Red Bridge

Nobody calls it the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge. It is the Red Bridge, and it is red because the box girders holding it up were painted that way — so thoroughly that when the tram company opened a stop here in December 2017 they gave up and named it Rout Bréck.

It exists because of the European Communities. Luxembourg became the temporary seat of the Coal and Steel Community in 1952, wanted to be the permanent capital, and needed somewhere to put the institutions. The Kirchberg plateau was sitting empty across the valley — close to the centre, and effectively unreachable.

In 1957 the government launched a competition for a bridge across the 75-metre gorge. Sixty-nine designs came in. The winner was a German architect, Egon Jux.

Work on the foundations began in April 1962. The girders were assembled in Germany and shipped here in three-by-thirteen-metre segments, by train and then by road; the last one was lifted into place in October 1964. Before anyone was allowed to drive across, the Belgian army lent twelve M48 Patton tanks, forty-two tonnes each, and drove them over it at once. Grand Duchess Charlotte opened it to traffic on the 24th of October 1966.

Between 2015 and 2018 it was rebuilt for around forty million euros, and rails were laid into the deck. Trams cross on battery power — there are no overhead wires spoiling the view.