Luxembourg, Ste Zithe

We go down into the Petruss Valley and follow the stream to its mouth into the Alzette, which we cross. We climb the rock stairs to the Rumm Plateau and walk through the districts Gronn and Clausen and cross the Alzette once more before starting the ascent back to the city centre.

All people who showed their opposition/resistance towards the German policy of annexation of Luxembourg to the German Reich were arrested and brought to this building to be interrogated and sometimes tortured before being sent to prisons or concentration camps.The villa’s basement had been transformed into prisonners’ cells where numerous members of Resistance movements were interrogated and tortured. Two plaques on the outside commemorate the victims of the Resistance and the 1300 Jews whose deportation was organised here. It now houses the Luxembourg Resistance Foundation (FONARES), the Foundation for the Memory of the victims of the Shoah and the “Comité pour la mémoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale”.

Their headquarters were established there from September to December 1944. An emergency underground shelter actually consisting of remains of 17th century fortifications, of the former “fortress Luxembourg”, was also provided. The plaque can be seen by walking across the one-arched “Grand Duke Adolphe” bridge in direction of Luxembourg train station on the side of the entrance of the right-wing building of the State saving’s Bank (BCEE)

The State Savings was created by law in 1856. The architect Jean-Pierre Koenig (1870-1919) started in 1910 the construction works on the new building which was finished in 1913. During the construction works the persons in charge noticed that the building was way too small and therefore a first annex to the existing building was built in 1913. A second mounting followed 1933. The State Savings Bank Building has been built in historism style and imitates the french Néo-Renaissance. The most prominent element is the tower (46 meter), that sets a distinctive accent to the skyline of Luxembourg City.