Fish Market

Despite the name, don't expect to find anyone selling fish here now — but for centuries, this square really was the city's fish market, and it's widely considered the oldest square in Luxembourg, sitting right at the point where the original settlement grew up around Count Siegfried's castle on the Bock.

This was the natural crossroads of the old town — literally. Two Roman roads met here, the one from Reims to Trier and the one from Metz to Liège, centuries before there was a castle, and a crossroads is where markets happen. In 987, twenty-four years after Siegfried bought the Bock, his castle chapel was built on this square; it is Saint Michael's Church now, the oldest church in the city, and it is still standing at the corner. Look around at the surrounding streets and you'll notice they're narrower and more irregular than elsewhere in the city center — that's medieval street planning, laid out long before anyone thought in straight lines and grids.

A number of the buildings facing the square are genuinely old, some dating back centuries, rebuilt and repaired many times over as the city was besieged, bombarded, and fortified again and again through its history. The National Museum of History and Art sits right on the square too, which is fitting — if you want context for everything else you're seeing on this walk, that's the place to get it.

It's a quiet, unassuming spot compared to some of the city's grander monuments, but it's arguably the most historically continuous piece of ground in Luxembourg — people have been gathering, trading, and living right here for over a thousand years.