Belair

What is today the City of Luxembourg’s district of Beggen was once a small village to the north of the Fortress of Luxembourg. In 1611, just seven households appeared in the census records for Beggen, and at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, in 1657, a mere five houses were inhabited in the village, their few inhabitants basket weavers and day labourers.

While poor Beggen seemed very much in danger of dying out altogether, and indeed remained a tiny village up until the Industrial Revolution in the 19^th century, it did, in the end, live to tell the tale and prosper: Over time, the population of the village grew, and by the time of the 1851 census, Beggen recorded 150 inhabitants. The number of people living in Beggen continued to rise, with significant rapid growth during the Industrial Revolution, due to the heightened demand for labour. The establishment of the first blast furnaces in Beggen, at the time part of the then municipality of Eich, made it one of the very first places in Luxembourg to undergo industrialisation.

One of the first industrial establishments in Beggen was a paper mill, which once stood on the site of the present-day Château de Beggen. In 1865, the site was purchased by the company Eicher Hütte - Société Metz & Cie. Twenty years earlier, the Eicher Hütte association had built an early blast furnace for coke and charcoal four hundred metres south of the château. The onset of industrialisation quickly led to major changes and the construction of imposing buildings in the valley along the Alzette river.

The paper mill was initially replaced by a villa, which burnt to the ground in 1894. Château de Beggen and its orangery, designed by Brussels architect Wynand Janssens, were then built here. Château de Beggen’s owners Émile Metz and his wife Edmée Metz-Tesch created an extensive park surrounding the château.

Émile Mayrisch, Director General of steel group ARBED, and his nephew Gaston Barbanson were Château de Beggen’s next private owners, before the property fell into the hands of the German Wehrmacht during the war and was subsequently taken over by the American military after the liberation. From 1950 to 1956, the château was used as a hotel, known as Hôtel des Forges, before being rented by the Embassy of the Soviet Union, which later purchased it in 1973 for 8.5 million francs.

Beggen merged with Luxembourg City in 1920, following lengthy negotiations and a referendum. Today, the former village on the banks of the Alzette is the capital’s northernmost district. In 1966, the church was extended to its original size, and its illuminated green neon cross has since become a Beggen landmark.

In addition to the above-mentioned château, the cultural centre with its large sports hall and the popular modern business centres, the side streets off the thoroughfare leading to Walferdingen (Rue de Beggen) offer a wealth of hidden gems to discover, including old winding alleyways, traditional inns and pretty allotment gardens.