Luxembourg

Luxembourg is a small landlocked grand duchy in Western Europe, bordered by Belgium, Germany and France. Luxembourg City is the capital and one of the seats of the European Union, home to its Court of Justice. Luxembourgish is the national language, laws are written only in French, and French, German and Luxembourgish all serve in administration.

Celtic tribes the Romans called the Treveri lived here before Julius Caesar's campaigns of 58 to 51 BC brought the area into the Roman Empire. Its written history starts in 963, when Siegfried, Count of the Ardennes, obtained the castle of Lucilinburhuc on the Bock rock from St. Maximin's Abbey in Trier. His successors grew powerful enough that Henry VII was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1312. The dynasty ended in 1443, and the duchy passed to Burgundy, to the Habsburgs from 1482 and to Revolutionary France in the 1790s.

The Congress of Vienna restored it in 1815 as a grand duchy under the Dutch king, but the Treaty of London of 1839 gave its French-speaking west, more than half its land, to Belgium. Joining the German customs union in 1842 opened the way for steel and railways. In 1867 a second Treaty of London confirmed its neutrality and had the fortress torn down, and in 1890 Adolph of Nassau-Weilburg began a dynasty of its own. It is a parliamentary democracy with a grand duke as constitutional monarch.

The country covers 2,586 km² (998 sq mi), and iron ore from the Red Lands in the south fed a steel industry that drove its growth until the 1970s. Banking, investment funds and reinsurance then took the lead, and the country is home to Radio Luxembourg, the RTL Group and the satellite operator SES. A founding member of NATO, Benelux and the European Coal and Steel Community, it gave its name to the Schengen agreements, signed in the village of Schengen. The old town and fortifications of the capital became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994, and on 29 February 2020 public transport became free across the whole country.