Luxembourg

Luxembourg grew around a rocky promontory above the deep gorges of the Alzette and Pétrusse, where a fortress was founded in 963. Successive powers — Burgundians, Spanish and Austrian Habsburgs, France, and Prussia — fought over and rebuilt it into one of the strongest fortifications in Europe, the "Gibraltar of the North."

The 1815 Congress of Vienna made Luxembourg a grand duchy in personal union with the Netherlands and a member of the German Confederation. The 1867 Treaty of London guaranteed its independence and neutrality and required the great powers to demolish the fortress; the surviving casemates — kilometres of tunnels bored into the rock — and the ramparts are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The crowns of Luxembourg and the Netherlands separated in 1890.

Germany occupied Luxembourg in both world wars, ending its neutrality and turning it into an enthusiastic founder of European integration. It is a founding member of the EU and hosts several EU institutions, including the Court of Justice and the European Investment Bank. The economy, built first on iron and steel, pivoted to finance from the late twentieth century and is now one of the world's largest investment-fund centres.

Luxembourgish identity rests heavily on the language — a Germanic tongue, standardised only recently, that is spoken at home and increasingly in public life even though French and German dominate paperwork and the press — and on the motto "Mir wëlle bleiwe wat mir sinn," "we want to remain what we are."

Nearly half the resident population, and a large share of the workforce, are foreign nationals or cross-border commuters from France, Belgium, and Germany, so daily life is genuinely multilingual and multinational, especially in the capital. Roman Catholicism shapes the calendar and traditions, though practice is low.

Distinctive customs include the hopping "dancing procession" of Echternach on Whit Tuesday, a UNESCO-listed pilgrimage; the Éimaischen pottery market in the capital on Easter Monday; the Schueberfouer, a large late-summer funfair dating to the fourteenth century; and the Buergbrennen bonfires on the first Sunday of Lent.

The roughly 670,000 residents are concentrated in and around Luxembourg City in the south-centre, and in the former steel towns of the "Minett" further south, around Esch-sur-Alzette. The north, the Éislek/Ardennes, is more rural and forested. Every working day the population swells by around 200,000 commuters crossing the borders.

The economy is one of the wealthiest per head in the world: financial services — funds, private banking, and holding companies — plus what remains of the steel industry (ArcelorMittal is headquartered here), the satellite operator SES, and, more recently, a push into space and logistics. The country's role in aggressive corporate tax structuring drew scrutiny after the "LuxLeaks" disclosures and has since been partly reformed.

Daily life is comfortable and international, built around the commute, the office, and weekends in the countryside or over a border, with free public transport making the whole small country easy to move around.

Luxembourgish cooking is hearty and Germanic with a strong French influence. The national dish is judd mat gaardebounen — smoked pork collar with broad beans in a cream sauce, served with boiled potatoes. Bouneschlupp (green-bean soup), Kachkéis (a soft melted cheese spread on bread with mustard), and Träipen (black pudding) with apple sauce are traditional.

Gromperekichelcher, deep-fried grated-potato patties, are a market and festival staple, and the country's rivers supply trout and, historically, fried Friture of small fish. Bakeries turn out Bretzel (a sweet almond pretzel associated with a spring custom) and rich pastries.

The Moselle valley in the southeast makes the country's wines — dry Rieslings, Pinots, Auxerrois, and the sparkling Crémant de Luxembourg — and these, with beer and coffee, are the everyday drinks.

Luxembourg City repays a day or two: the Bock casemates and the "Corniche" walkway billed as "Europe's most beautiful balcony," the old lower town of the Grund down in the gorge, the Adolphe Bridge, the Grand Ducal Palace, and the Notre-Dame Cathedral, contrasted with the modern Kirchberg plateau, where the EU buildings, the Philharmonie, and I. M. Pei's Mudam contemporary-art museum stand.

In the north, Vianden has a large, beautifully restored hilltop castle above the Our river, with a Victor Hugo museum in the house where the writer stayed. Echternach, the country's oldest town, has a Benedictine abbey and the famous dancing procession, and Clervaux Castle houses Edward Steichen's "The Family of Man" photography exhibition.

"Little Switzerland," the Mullerthal region around Berdorf and Consdorf, is a walkers' landscape of sandstone rock formations, gorges, and streams. The Moselle wine road runs southeast through villages like Remich and Grevenmacher to Schengen, where the border-free agreement was signed on a boat in 1985, and the industrial-heritage south around Esch-sur-Alzette has museums and a heritage railway in the old iron-mining country.