Villa Vauban - Luxembourg City Art Museum
City art museum in a 19th-century villa and park, holding Dutch, Flemish and French old masters.
The villa was built in 1873 as a private residence for the glove manufacturer Gabriel Mayer, to a neoclassical design by the city architect Jean-Francois Eydt, and stands on the foundations of a seventeenth-century fort attributed to the engineer Vauban. The City of Luxembourg acquired the house and later opened it as its art museum. A glass-and-stone extension completed in 2010 by Diane Heirend and Philippe Schmit doubled the exhibition space and connected the historic rooms to new galleries below the garden.
The collection grew out of three private bequests to the city. The Pescatore collection is strongest in seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish painting and in nineteenth-century French art; the Lippmann and Hochhertz collections add portraits, still lifes and history painting. These works form the long-running display A Stroll Through Art, which is shown alongside changing temporary exhibitions. The museum sits in the municipal park laid out on the former fortifications, and its sculpture-dotted grounds are open to walkers.
Highlights
- Pescatore bequest of Dutch, Flemish and French paintings
- A Stroll Through Art, the long-running collection display
- 2010 underground extension by Heirend & Schmit
- Municipal park on the site of Vauban's fortifications
