Clervaux Travel Guide

Housed inside Clervaux Castle, the Museum of the Battle of the Ardennes focuses on the fierce fighting in and around Clervaux during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944. Dioramas, weapons, uniforms and survivor testimonies convey the campaign's brutality: the town was overrun by the German surprise offensive just before Christmas and liberated days later as the Allies counterattacked. The display is compact, taking about an hour, and shares the castle with The Family of Man photo exhibition and the castle-models collection, so one ticket area covers several sights, a key stop for understanding Luxembourg's wartime memory.

Inside Clervaux Castle, the exhibition of models of ancient Luxembourg castles presents meticulously crafted scale reconstructions of the country's great fortresses at their heyday. From Vianden to Beaufort and Bourscheid, the models make the defensive geography of this hilly land instantly readable, combining fine craftsmanship with historical research. Built up over many years, they are a wonderful way for children to grasp medieval architecture. Allow about half an hour, and pair it with the Battle of the Ardennes museum and The Family of Man in the same castle for a perfect rainy-day circuit.

Clervaux Castle is a quaint, white medieval castle in Clervaux—a white, quaint castle high above the town, simple and weighty, symbol of Clervaux and a profound attraction. It stands in the Ardennes forest valley in northern Luxembourg, a quaint, white, weighty, famous medieval castle, symbol and landmark of Clervaux. With long history (founded in the Middle Ages), through centuries of building and expansion, simple, elegant and weighty—its white castle buildings (towers, thick walls, grand halls) stand strikingly on the town's high ground, overlooking the quaint, beautiful Clervaux nestled in the forest valley—picturesque. Especially weighty is its WWII history—in the Battle of the Bulge, Clervaux and the castle endured fierce fighting and severe damage (the castle was burned); later carefully restored. This history witnesses the suffering of war—worth remembering, cherishing peace. Today the restored castle houses several museums (the famous "The Family of Man" photo exhibition, castle model exhibition, Battle of the Bulge exhibition).

The Family of Man is one of the most legendary exhibitions in photographic history. Curated by Edward Steichen of New York's Museum of Modern Art, it opened in 1955 and then toured dozens of countries to record-breaking attendance. Since 1994 the complete set of 503 photographs by 273 photographers has been permanently housed in Clervaux Castle, and in 2003 it was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World register. Built around the shared journey of human life, from birth and labour to love and death, the images cross every culture and border and still hang quietly in place today.