American Cemetery

This is one of the most solemn places in Luxembourg, and one of the most significant American war memorials in Europe. It's a military cemetery for 5,074 US soldiers who died in the 1944–45 Battle of the Bulge and the advance into Germany, laid out with row upon row of white marble crosses and Stars of David on a quiet hillside in Hamm, a few kilometres from the old town. It was opened on the 29th of December 1944, in the middle of the battle, by a quartermaster company of the Third Army — whose commander had made Luxembourg City his headquarters. Twenty-two pairs of brothers lie here side by side.

That commander was General George S. Patton. He survived the war and died in December 1945, of injuries from a road accident in Germany, and was buried here at his own request, among the men who had served under him. His grave stands alone between the two flagpoles at the head of the plots, facing the rows — a detail visitors often notice.

The cemetery is maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, and it shows: the grounds are immaculate, the white crosses aligned with almost unsettling precision when you look down the rows. The white stone chapel near the entrance is worth ten minutes even if you don't linger elsewhere: look up at its mosaic ceiling, and at the maps of the campaign on the memorial beside it.

It's not a typical stop on a monuments walk — no dramatic architecture, no statue to photograph — but it's one of the places in Luxembourg where the country's 20th-century history is least abstract.