Pfaffenthal-Kirchberg Station

The Kirchberg, up on the plateau above you, is where Luxembourg put Europe: the Court of Justice, the European Parliament's offices, the investment bank, and, around them, the banks and towers that pay for the country. For fifty years the only way there by train was to ride into the central station on the far side of the city and cross it again by bus. In September 2011 the government presented the answer: a new stop on the northern railway line, here in the Pfaffenthal, and a funicular to haul passengers up the cliff to the tram on the Avenue Kennedy.

Trees were cleared in March 2015, the building went up from 2016, and the station and the funicular opened together on the 10th of December 2017, for around 96 million euros. Five trains an hour stop here in each direction — the line runs north to Ettelbruck and Troisvierges and on into Belgium — and the funicular takes a minute to climb. Nobody has to buy a ticket for it; since public transport in Luxembourg became free, nobody buys a ticket for anything, and the funicular has become something its planners did not quite intend: a free lift, with room for bicycles, joining the valley to the plateau for anyone who does not fancy the hill.

The station has its critics — there is no waiting room, because the ministry feared vandalism, and the platforms catch the wind off the valley — but it changed the shape of the city. The Pfaffenthal, for a century the quarter nobody passed through any more, is once again the place you get off.