Villa Louvigny

The tower rising out of the trees in the park is where, for two generations, much of Europe tuned in. This is Villa Louvigny, and for sixty-four years it was Radio Luxembourg.

The ground it stands on was a redoubt of the fortress, built in 1672 and named after Jean Charles de Landas, Count of Louvigny, the engineer who was running the defences at the time. When the walls came down the redoubt was auctioned off, in November 1868, for 9,600 francs, and the buyer turned it into something the city had never had: an open-air pleasure garden, with a restaurant and a ballroom, a skittle alley, billiard tables, even a cycle track with its own bicycle school. Variety acts played here — in 1896 a "battle of the titans" between the Travelli brothers and John Grün, the strongman from Mondorf — and that same year the city saw its first Lumière film in these rooms.

Then, in 1932, a brand-new company rented the villa to do something new: broadcast to the whole continent from one small country. Radio Luxembourg went on air from here on the 15th of March 1933. The occupiers took the studios over in 1940 and broadcast German programmes from them; the Americans walked in on the 11th of September 1944, the day after the liberation, and used them for their own. The company rebuilt, added an auditorium for its orchestra in 1952 — Grand Duchess Charlotte came to open it — and in 1956 the eight-storey tower you can see from all over the park, standing on the foundations of the old redoubt. In 1962 and again in 1966 the Eurovision Song Contest was held inside. Radio and then television left for the Kirchberg in 1991 and 1996, and the state bought the empty building for 931 million francs. Its orchestra stayed until the Philharmonie was finished in 2005; the Ministry of Health had the offices until 2023.

Look above the entrance: a red lion with wings, and the motto "Alas Leoni Dedit" — "it gave the lion wings". That was the station's emblem, and it is still the best summary of what happened here. The building has been a listed national monument since 2018, and the plan is to give it back to culture, with the old auditorium at its heart.