Casemates 3D
Casemates 3D
Digital documentation project at the Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg
Watch this space. This overview page will be continuously updated.
The matrix of the city and the fortress: an ongoing project
After the Treaty of London in 1867, the fortress of Luxembourg was dismantled. The works were demilitarized, defunctionalized, blown up, demolished and filled in. Some structures, however, have been preserved. These existing remnants, many of which are now underground, are known in Luxembourg as "casemates". While the specific term in fortification terminology refers to a room equipped with artillery, the local understanding of “casemates” includes all underground fortifications that extend above and below (almost) the entire capital.
There is no up-to-date, reliable documentation of this largely inaccessible maze of corridors – excluding historical and more recent maps and plans. Technology offers a way out, enabling to document existing structures accurately and making them not only accessible online, but also understandable in their context. In addition, objects from and around the fortress, which have been preserved in the MNAHA’s collections, which are conserved by the CDF, and which are partly exhibited at the Musée Dräi Eechelen, can document and illustrate the context.
This project continues the historical tradition of fortress models in Luxembourg. The Napoleonic relief plan from 1803 and the model cast in bronze in 1903 by Captain Guillaume Weydert of the Luxembourg’s Volunteer Corps, which shows the fortress before it was razed to the ground, are now followed by the building blocks for a digital model of the 21st century.
Pilot: The Kirchberg Forts
In 2018, as part of the “Année du Patrimoine”, the CDF made a series of 3D scans of the casemates and galleries of Fort Thüngen as well as Olizy/Niedergrünewald on Kirchberg.
Layers below the leaves: Remains of the "Front of the Plain" below Municipal Park
The municipal park, designed by Edouard André (1840-1911), with its green spaces interspersed with promenades, rests on the remains and foundations of the fortifications that protected the city to the north-west.
The engineer and later commander Jean-Chrétien Charles de Landas de Louvigny ( ?-1691) had the fortress reinforced on this front from 1672 and built completely new, low, pentagonal towers (redoubt) surrounded by a deep moat, the Peter, Louvigny, Marie and Berlaymont redoubts. After Louis XIV's troops took over the town in 1684, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707) had three more redoubts built between the existing ones, the Lambert, Vauban and Royal redoubts. This architecture subsequently set a precedent: Vauban had towers like these built in fortresses over the entire realm of the Sun King. As part of the construction programme of the Austrian Habsburgs under the direction of the engineer Simon de Bauffe, these redoubts were each reinforced in the 1730s by an envelope, a defensive structure built around the redoubts. A century later, they were modernized again under the Prussian governance of the Federal Fortress. Unforeseeable at the time, the razing work carried out from 1867 onwards caused the redoubts to disappear under a planted area, which André molded into a city park. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the historian Jean-Pierre Koltz (1909-1989) presented a project to turn some of the casemates in air raid shelters, which was implemented in 1939 and 1940.
Built under the Spanish Habsburgs, multiplied by the French crown, reinforced by the Austrian Habsburgs, modernized by the German Confederation, and reactivated during the Second World War, the casemates in and under the municipal park bear witness to the eventful modern and contemporary times.
Fort Louvigny
The Louvigny redoubt was built between 1672 and 1673. In 1733, a so-called envelope was built around the redoubt. It is named Fort Daun after the infantry regiment garrisoned there and its commander Leopold von Daun. At the beginning of the 19th century, it was repaired and modernized between 1829 and 1830. Fort Louvigny was demolished in 1869 and the Villa Louvigny of the same name was built on the foundations of the redoubt in 1871.
Download the 3D model of Fort Louvigny from Sketchfab.
Text | CC BY-NC | Ralph Lange & Simone Feis, MNAHA
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Further reading:
Bruns, Änder/Reinert, François (Hgg.), Genie und Festung. Luxemburger Festungspläne in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Publications du Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg auprès du Musée national d’histoire et d’art 2), Luxemburg 2013.
Lange, Ralph, Delaings Plan, in: Reinert, François (Hg.), Collect10ns (2012-2022) (Publications du Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg auprès du Musée national d’histoire et d’art 9), Luxemburg 2022, 76–77.
Lange, Ralph, Das systematische Bauprogramm des Chefingenieurs Simon de Bauffe, in: Ders./Reinert, François (Hgg.), Sub umbra alarum. Luxemburg, Festung der Habsburger 1716–1741 (Publications du Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg auprès du Musée national d’archéologie, d’histoire et d’art 10), Luxemburg 2023, 76–101.
Lascombes, François, Chronik der Stadt Luxemburg (3 Bde.), Luxemburg 1968-1988.
Koltz, Jean-Pierre, Baugeschichte der Stadt und Festung Luxemburg in drei Bänden mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der kriegsgeschichtlichen Ereignisse. Luxemburg 1944 [2. überarb. Aufl. 1970]
Reinert, François (Hg.), 1867 – Luxembourg ville ouverte (Publications du Centre de documentation sur la forteresse de Luxembourg auprès du Musée national d’histoire et d’art 4), Luxembourg 2017.
Reinert, François, „Do weist de Fuuss e Schloff mer, En nennt et Kasematt“, in: Ons Stad 126 (2023): 11–14.
Schaul, Patrick, Luftschutz im 2. Weltkrieg. Das zweite Leben der Kasematten, in: Ons Stad 126 (2023): 30–32.
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Publication date: 2024-04-30
Last update: 2024-04-30
