Bock Casemates
Underground gun galleries cut into the Bock promontory, part of Luxembourg's World Heritage fortress.
The Bock is the rocky spur where Count Siegfried built his castle in 963, the point from which the city of Luxembourg grew. Successive rulers turned the promontory into the strongpoint of a fortress that became known as the Gibraltar of the North. The Spanish cut the first galleries into the rock in 1644, and Austrian engineers greatly enlarged them from 1745, creating a warren of chambers, stairways and firing positions several storeys deep inside the cliff.
When the Treaty of London of 1867 required the fortress to be dismantled, the casemates were spared because demolishing them would have brought down part of the city above; their entrances were sealed instead. Today about seventeen kilometres of the original twenty-three survive, and a marked route leads visitors through the main gallery, past gun embrasures with views over the Alzette valley and the Grund. The casemates were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List with the old quarters in 1994.
Highlights
- Galleries cut into the rock from 1644 and enlarged after 1745
- Remains of Count Siegfried's castle on the promontory
- Gun embrasures looking over the Alzette valley and the Grund
- Part of the UNESCO World Heritage old quarters and fortifications
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