While I have been to older places, Vianden Castle in Luxembourg remains one of the most memorable…

Our trip to the canton of Vianden—and Vianden Castle—in Luxembourg occurred during the summer of 2000. I was traveling through Europe on something of a club tour with a group of close friends. We had just spent two weeks in Ibiza, and we had arrived back in Amsterdam. Looking for something to do one Saturday, we rented a car on the spur of the moment and decided to drive South into Luxembourg to see some of the castles there. The drive South was beautiful as we passed through The Netherlands, drove across Belgium, and eventually wound up in Luxembourg. Northern Luxembourg is only a bit more than ten miles wide, and Vianden rests near the Eastern border with Germany.

We began the day by going first to Luxembourg City in the South, where we learned that the people of Luxembourg remain some of the most unfriendly in all of Europe. It was all we could do to get directions to an ATM machine—many of the people, although they speak German, French, and English, refuse to speak in anything but Luxembourgish (yes, they have their own language). I suppose our little excursion to the tiny country’s capital proves that national and cultural pride are inversely proportional to a country’s physical size:) After finally managing to get both some money and a bit of food, we followed our map East into the Moselle Valley, where we stopped briefly at several castles. Continuing North from there, toward the Ardennes Forest, we eventually ended up in Vianden in the middle of the afternoon and ended up staying there (and visiting the remarkable castle) until sundown.

The town and canton of Vianden, which rests in the valley below the castle, traces its origins back to the Gallo-Roman age, when there was a castellum on the site of the present castle. Vianden itself was originally known as Viennensis, probably derived from the Celtic vien (“rock”). The first historical reference to Vianden was in 698, and the town itself possesses one of the oldest charters in Europe, granted in 1308 by Philip II, count of Vianden, from whom the family of Nassau-Vianden sprang, and who was consequently the ancestor of William of Orange (you can see here why I had a particular affinity for the history of the place—its roundabout connection to Princeton, my alma mater, many generations later).

Vianden Castle

Vianden Castle was built between the 11th and 14th centuries on the foundations both of the old Roman fortress and a later Carolingian refuge. It remains one of the largest and most well-preserved feudal residences of the romanesque and gothic periods in Europe. The chapel and the small and large palaces, respectively, originate from the end of the 12th and the first half of the 13th century. The ‘Quartier de Juliers’ on the western side of the large palace, originated from the beginning of the 14th century. Until the beginning of the 15th century it was the seat of the influential Counts of Vianden, a line of nobles who enjoyed close connections not only to the Royal Family of France, but also to the German imperial court. In 1417, the lands of the canton passed by inheritance to the House of Nassau, and thus the castle no longer served as the official residence of the counts. People can still see the rich architecture the House of Nassau inherited, since nothing further was changed or built after that point. Over the next few centuries, a victim of neglect, the castle fell into a state of ruin. Finally, after its ownership was transferred to the state in 1977 by the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, the ancient fortress was finally restored to its former glory. It has become an important historical monument, not only for Luxembourg but for all of Europe.

We happened to see the castle on a perfect summer day, and from its towers you can literally see beyond Luxembourg’s borders into Germany. The modern town of Vianden, quaint and still somewhat medieval in its atmosphere (a quality unique to Europe, as anyone who has traveled there can attest), snakes through the valley below. While I still have many pictures from that day, for me the memory remains even stronger. I think that sometimes we experience certain moments in time, mentally “freezing” those that move us the most, or affect us more deeply than others, or change our underlying personal compass in some manner that we can’t quite identify. This was one of those experiences for me. I’ll keep it with me for the rest of my life.