Kirchberg is the plateau north-east of the old city, connected by the Grand Duchess Charlotte Bridge — known universally as the Red Bridge. Until the 1960s it was farmland. It now holds the European institutions based in Luxembourg, the financial sector and the country's principal cultural buildings.
The institutions
Luxembourg is one of the three official seats of the European Union, alongside Brussels and Strasbourg, and hosts the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Investment Bank, the European Court of Auditors, Eurostat and part of the Commission's administration.
The Court of Justice complex, with its golden towers, is the most visible. Public hearings can be attended free of charge, which very few visitors realise — the schedule is published online and it is a genuinely interesting hour if a case is running.
Mudam and the Philharmonie
Mudam, the Museum of Modern Art Grand-Duc Jean, was designed by I. M. Pei — architect of the Louvre pyramid — and built into the remains of Fort Thüngen, an eighteenth-century fortification. Glass and limestone rise out of the old bastion, and the building is more interesting than much of what it contains, though the exhibition programme is strong.
Next door, the Philharmonie by Christian de Portzamparc is a white ellipse of 823 slender steel columns, acoustically one of the best concert halls in Europe and home to the Luxembourg Philharmonic.
The Dräi Eechelen Museum, inside Fort Thüngen itself, covers the history of the fortress and the country — the best single introduction to how a fortified town became an independent state.
The architecture
Kirchberg is effectively an open-air collection of contemporary European architecture, with buildings by Pei, Portzamparc, Ricardo Bofill, Gottfried Böhm and others along a single avenue. Opinions on the result vary sharply; it is undeniably a place built for institutions rather than people, though recent development has added housing and public space.
Practical
The tram runs from the central station through the city centre to Kirchberg and on to the airport, and is free. The whole plateau is walkable, and the contrast with the medieval city twenty minutes away is the point of going.