Luxembourg: Vianden Castle, Beaufort Ruins & Medieval Echternach

Beaufort Castle was built in the 12th century by the Lords of Beaufort on a rocky promontory in the Mullerthal forest — one of the most dramatically positioned medieval castles in Luxembourg. The original Romanesque keep was expanded through the 15th century, and a Renaissance château was added in the 16th century by the Salm family. The castle was abandoned in 1795 and its stone was subsequently quarried for local construction, leaving the atmospheric roofless ruins visible today — ivy-covered towers, collapsed vaulted halls and a still-intact underground cistern. The Beaufort lords were notorious for their blackcurrant liqueur (cassis), still produced today under the Beaufort name from the castle's orchards.

The Mullerthal region — named for its mill valleys — contains Luxembourg's most distinctive landscape: sandstone rock formations worn into extraordinary shapes by millions of years of erosion, ancient beech forest, and clear streams. The guide covers the region's medieval history and the story of Echternach — Luxembourg's oldest town, founded in 698 by the Northumbrian missionary St Willibrord (later venerated as the Apostle of the Frisians). His basilica still stands in the town centre, rebuilt in Romanesque style in the 11th century on the site of the original 7th-century abbey.

Vianden Castle is the most impressive medieval castle in Luxembourg and one of the finest examples of Romanesque-Gothic palatial architecture west of the Rhine. The castle was the seat of the Counts of Vianden — one of the most powerful dynasties in the medieval Low Countries — from the 11th to the 14th century. Their palace included an extraordinary circular Romanesque chapel (one of only a handful in western Europe), vast Gothic halls, and a defensive system of towers and curtain walls enclosing the entire hilltop. The castle passed to the House of Nassau-Orange in the 14th century and was eventually inherited by William of Orange — the same dynasty that provided stadholders to the Dutch Republic and King William III of England. Victor Hugo, exiled from France by Napoleon III, spent several summers in Vianden in the 1860s and wrote extensively about the castle. The restored castle offers views over the entire Our River valley toward Germany.