How one tower launched the transformation of Kirchberg 60 years ago

Today, Kirchberg is known as the business and EU district of Luxembourg’s capital. Its dozens-of-metre-tall buildings as far as the eye can see, along the tram tracks and the road, bear witness to the intense activity that reigns there for most of the week.

So it’s hard to imagine that just 60 years ago, there was absolutely nothing there. Farmland occupied the area that now houses the towers, and farmers lived in the vicinity before moving on to other land.

The first building to mark this urban transformation was the Alcide De Gasperi tower, “Héichhaus” in Luxembourgish.

In 1965, after five years of work, this monstrous 77-metre-high structure was completed. The following year, it was inaugurated, and ushered in the transformation of the Kirchberg area.

In just a few decades, the 365 hectares of Kirchberg have become a business hub © Photo credit: Illustration/Shutterstock

Why Kirchberg has undergone such a transformation

To understand how this transformation came about, we need to go back to the origins. In 1952, Luxembourg City was designated as the workplace of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a precursor of what we now call the European Union.

At the time, it included Luxembourg, as well as France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and West Germany.

“Several cities were considered, including Strasbourg, Saarbrücken and Liège. But in the end it was Luxembourg that was chosen as the location,” said Martine Hemmer, head of communications for the Fonds Kirchberg, the district’s urban development fund.

“The government came up with the idea of creating an entire city that was the complete opposite of the one that had existed until then,” she added.

The problem at the time was that the premises available to these various organisations were too small and too scattered.

So the idea was to bring everything together on a single site, in larger premises.

The “Kirchberg Plateau Urbanisation and Development Fund”, more commonly known as the “Kirchberg Fund”, was given the task of “urbanising and developing the Kirchberg Plateau” by a law passed on 7 August 1961.

At the time, 365 hectares of land were earmarked for agricultural production and market gardening. One expropriation procedure followed another, and farming gradually disappeared from the plateau.

At the same time as the tower was being built, another large-scale project was gradually taking shape just a stone’s throw away: the Grande-Duchesse Charlotte bridge, or “Rout Bréck” as it is known. Work on the infrastructure stretched from 1962 to 1965. It was inaugurated in 1966, the same year as the Alcide De Gasperi tower. Kirchberg has been connected to the city centre ever since.

Meanwhile, the tower, named after one of the “fathers of Europe”, former Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi (1881-1954), was to house the secretariat of the European Parliament.

The inauguration of the tower marked the start of the transformation of the district’s roads: huge car parks were built and roads were constructed to serve the plateau and link it to Findel airport and the city centre.

Other imposing buildings that came later

From its inauguration until 2008, the imposing 22-storey structure remained the tallest building in the capital.

The first two towers of the European Court of Justice, inaugurated that year and measuring 103 metres, overtook it in the rankings. The third tower, inaugurated in 2019, holds the current record at 118 metres.

At 77 metres, the Alcide de Gasperi remained the tallest building in Luxembourg City from 1966 to 2008 © Photo credit: Lex Kleren

In 1973, “the Robert Schuman building and the European Court of Justice were inaugurated almost at the same time, completing the district”, explained Hemmer.

35 plenary sessions of the European Parliament were held in the new hemicycle between 1973 and 1979, before the inauguration of the hemicycle in the Kirchberg conference centre.

“The growing number of MEPs meant that Luxembourg lost out in the race to become an institution,” added the head of communications at the Fonds Kirchberg.

With the growing number of employees coming to work in Luxembourg and the explosion of the services sector, more and more office towers were built in the district over the years. Construction of the Kirchberg District Centre began in 1993.

In 1996, the commercial section was completed, followed by the office section in 1998. Today, the building is home to the Kirchberg Shopping Centre, with the Auchan store as the site’s largest retailer.

Over the years, other buildings have also opened that helped Kirchberg branch out beyond its traditional label of simply being a business district, such as the Philharmonie, the Coque, Luxexpo.

There is no shortage of new buildings planned for Kirchberg over the coming years.

Among the biggest projects expected in the district are the Jean Monnet 2 tower, the future headquarters of the European Commission in Luxembourg, as well as K22, the future global headquarters of ArcelorMittal, the new headquarters of the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the three new buildings to be occupied by the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

(This article was originally published by Virgule. Translation and editing by John Monaghan)