Basilica of St Willibrord

The 7th-century abbey church, rebuilt after WWII bombing

St Willibrord, an Anglo-Saxon missionary, founded the Benedictine abbey here in 698 AD on land granted by a local Frankish abbess, and the church above his tomb has stood — in successive forms — ever since. The current basilica is a striking pale-stone Romanesque-Gothic structure, with twin western towers, a long aisled nave, and high clerestory windows.

The interior is severe, almost spare, and feels closer in atmosphere to a Cistercian abbey than to a typical baroque pilgrimage church. Descend into the crypt: a low, vaulted space below the high altar with painted columns, frescoes, and the white-marble sarcophagus of Willibrord, who has been venerated as Luxembourg's patron saint since the 8th century. On the Tuesday after Whitsun the basilica is the focus of the famous Springprozession, the UNESCO-listed dancing procession that draws tens of thousands of pilgrims.

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A story
In December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, the basilica was hit by an American bombing run and largely destroyed. Photographs of the collapsed nave with the apse still standing are widely reproduced in Luxembourg. The present building is a careful 1953 reconstruction of the Romanesque-Gothic original — but the crypt below, with Willibrord's sarcophagus, survived the war intact.