Tiny Luxembourg once put a count on the imperial throne
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg covers just 2,586 square kilometres—Europe’s seventh-smallest country—yet in 2026 held about 693,916 residents at high density. An eleventh-century county rose until Henry VII wore the Holy Roman crown.
Luxembourg shares Low Countries history with Belgium and the Netherlands, and Luxembourgish, a Germanic language, is the national tongue beside strong French and German influence. The Romans called the local Celts the Treveri, whose Titelberg oppidum survives, and Caesar’s conquest of Gaul in 58–51 BC began some 450 years of Roman rule that left sites such as Dalheim and the Vichten mosaic. Rome abandoned the area in 406, and Salian Franks brought their Germanic speech.
Willibrord, a Northumbrian missionary, founded the Abbey of Echternach in 698, still honoured by an annual dancing procession. After the Treaty of Verdun in 843 the land passed through Middle Francia, Lotharingia, and Lorraine. Recorded history begins in 963, when Siegfried, Count of the Ardennes, acquired Lucilinburhuc on the Bock rock from St. Maximin’s Abbey in Trier, and a town grew around the fort.
By the mid-thirteenth century the counts ruled from the Meuse to the Moselle. Henry VII became King of the Romans and, in 1312, emperor; his son John the Blind became King of Bohemia and founded the Schueberfouer fair. Charles IV, Wenceslaus IV, and Sigismund followed, and Charles issued the Golden Bull of 1356, but the dynasty died out in 1443 and Luxembourg passed to Burgundy.
Nearly four centuries of foreign rule followed. Philip the Handsome inherited the duchy in 1482, bringing Austrian and then Spanish Habsburg rule; François I of France invaded twice in 1542, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 made the first partition, ceding Thionville, Montmédy, and Stenay. France occupied the duchy again from 1684 to 1697, and each ruler strengthened the fortress that grew from the castle.
Source: Luxembourg
