Esch-sur-Alzette is a commune with town status in south-western Luxembourg. It is the country’s second “city”, and its second-most populous commune, with a population of 35,040 inhabitants, as of 2018. It lies in the south-west of the country, on the border with France and in the valley of the Alzette, which flows through the town. The town is usually referred to as just Esch; however, the full name distinguishes it from the village and commune of Esch-sur-Sûre which lies 45 kilometres (28 miles) further north. The country’s capital, Luxembourg City, is roughly 15 km (9.3 mi) to the north-east. The town has the longest shopping street in Luxembourg. On November 10, 2017, Esch was selected by the European Council as the European Capital of Culture in 2022 on the recommendation of the responsible committee. The city shares this title with the Lithuanian city of Kaunas. In addition to the other ten municipalities of the PROSUD syndicate, the municipalities of the Pays Haut Val d’Alzette municipal association across the border in France will also take part in the events.
For a long time Esch was a small farming village in the valley of the Uelzecht river. This changed when important amounts of iron ore were found in the area in the 1850s. With the development of the mines and the steel industry the town’s population multiplied tenfold in a couple of decades. In 1911 the steel- and iron-producing company ARBED was founded. The development of the steel industry, especially in the south of the country, provided Luxembourg with sustained economic growth during the second half of the 19th century. In the 1970s, as a result of the steel crisis, the mines and many of the blast furnaces were shut down, the last one, in Esch-Belval, definitely halting its operations in 1997. The blast furnaces were replaced by an electric furnace that is fed with scrap metal rather than iron ore. Today the industrial wastelands on Belval left behind by the steel industry, are being redeveloped and converted into a new, modern town quarter. New cultural buildings such as the cinema Kinepolis Belval and the Rockhal, Luxembourg’s biggest concert hall, schools, flats and Belval Plaza, a shopping centre, have been built in the last years. One of the largest employers in the town is ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel producer, which formed from the merger of Aceralia, ARBED, Mittal, and Usinor.
The area around the old blast furnaces will host different structures of the University of Luxembourg, many research centres and the national archives. Two of the University’s three faculties relocated there: The Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Education Sciences already moved in the summer of 2016, and the Faculty of Sciences, Technology and Communication in fall 2017.
The Lankelz miniature railway operates on Sunday afternoons and public holidays from May to mid-October. Esch is home to the Conservatoire de Musique. Founded as a school of music in 1926, it achieved Conservatoire status in 1969. There are two cinemas in the centre of the town, one called the ‘Ariston’ (which has since closed down), the ‘Kinosch’ and a third one called ‘Utopolis Belval’ is situated in the former industrial wastelands Belval. The main theatre is the Théâtre d’Esch. There is also the Kulturfabrik, a cultural centre in a reconverted abattoir which hosts performances of various kinds. The town is the site of one of the six regional headquarters of the Grand Ducal Police.
