LUXEMBOURG COUNTRY GUIDE — EDITORIAL AND MAP REFERENCES Reviewed 20 October 2026 Guide: /atlas/luxembourg Reading: /facts/lu Languages: /words/luxembourgish, /words/french, /words/german POPULATION, LANGUAGES AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT The national portal reports about 691,000 residents on 1 January 2026 and a foreign-national share of 46.6%. These are resident/citizenship measures, separate from cross-border employment, ancestry and home language. The population is rounded deliberately; the EU profile reports Eurostat's 690,959 for 2026. The national portal's area is 2,586 km²; area estimates depend on source and measurement. The EU profile uses a different geographic-area figure. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/population/demographics.html https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/eu-countries/luxembourg_en The 1984 language law names Luxembourgish as national language, French for legislation, and permits Luxembourgish, French and German in administrative and judicial matters. School language use varies by stage and programme. Merci and Merci villmools are both valid, so a quiz must distinguish thank you from thank you very much rather than treating one as incorrect. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/languages/languages-spoken-luxembourg.html https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/languages/introduction-luxembourgish.html Fare-free domestic public buses, trams and second-class trains began on 29 February 2020, not in 2019. First-class rail and travel outside Luxembourg have separate fare rules. This is not a claim that every transport service is free. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/living/mobility/public-transport.html HISTORY, POLITICS AND CULTURE 963: Count Siegfried's acquisition of the fortified site, not the founding of today's sovereign state. 1839: partition and present territorial form. 1867: neutrality, Prussian withdrawal and fortress dismantling. 1890: end of personal union with the Netherlands. The Belgo-Luxembourg Economic Union dates to 1921. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/history/fondation-du-luxembourg.html https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/history/top-5-historic-dates-luxembourg.html https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/history/top-5-agreements-luxembourg-history.html The Schengen Agreement was signed aboard the Princesse Marie-Astrid near Schengen in 1985, not at the palace in Luxembourg City. Implementation began in 1995. https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/international-openness/schengen-40-years-european-history-ship.html The Chamber of Deputies has 60 elected members. The Council of State is advisory. The Court of Justice of the EU in Luxembourg differs from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/eu-countries/luxembourg_en https://www.chd.lu/en https://curia.europa.eu/ Luxembourg City held European Capital of Culture in 1995 and 2007; Esch held it with its partner area in 2022. National Day is the sovereign's official birthday. Echternach's Whit Tuesday hopping procession is UNESCO intangible heritage, which differs from the World Heritage listing for the capital's old quarters. https://culture.ec.europa.eu/policies/culture-in-cities-and-regions/european-capitals-of-culture https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/hopping-procession-of-echternach-00392 https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/699/ UNESCO direct automated requests were blocked during review; descriptions were cross-checked through Luxembourg's official tourism and national portals. Steichen's The Family of Man is at Clervaux Castle, not Clervaux Abbey. https://www.visitluxembourg.com/place/the-family-of-man https://steichencollections-cna.lu/ LANDSCAPES, SIGHTS AND FOOD Kneiff is about 560 metres and higher than Buurgplaatz. Upper Sûre Lake is a reservoir. Mullerthal is a sandstone landscape, not an alpine region. The Minett UNESCO Biosphere designation is separate from World Heritage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneiff https://www.visitluxembourg.com/ https://www.naturpark-sure.lu/en/ https://www.minett-biosphere.com/en/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Luxembourg The Adolphe Bridge crosses the Pétrusse. Crémant is made using traditional bottle fermentation; Champagne is a protected regional name. Each sight has an English Wikipedia target checked for existence; broader articles are used where no standalone English article exists (Corniche: Grund; Schiessentümpel: Little Switzerland). Representative coordinates identify learning locations, not routes, entrances, opening times or present-day access arrangements. MAP DATA AND REPRODUCIBILITY Sixteen curated settlement-centre pins and authored clues are retained in scripts/luxembourg-map-places.json. The two eight-place groups are learning groups, not administrative divisions. Rebuild with node scripts/build-luxembourg-map.mjs. No canton, commune-boundary or river game is implied. The country outline uses geoBoundaries gbOpen LUX ADM0, boundary ID LUX-ADM0-64508393, represented year 2017, release commit 9469f09. Source: OpenStreetMap contributors / Wambacher, via geoBoundaries. License: Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0 (ODbL 1.0). Retained in scripts/luxembourg-outline.geojson; public derivative at /luxembourg-land.geojson. Both retain source and licence properties. Simplified with Turf at 0.0001 degrees, highQuality: true. This is a generalised learning outline, not a current cadastral or legal boundary survey. City centres fall inside it; a 150-metre margin allows for river-bank sight coordinates. https://www.geoboundaries.org/api/current/gbOpen/LUX/ADM0/ https://github.com/wmgeolab/geoBoundaries/blob/9469f09/releaseData/gbOpen/LUX/ADM0/geoBoundaries-LUX-ADM0.geojson https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/ ILLUSTRATIONS AND LICENCES All eleven images are locally served. No generated scenes are used. Five reuse credited Luxembourgish lesson assets: - Banner: Grand Ducal Palace — Cayambe, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxembourg_Grand_Ducal_Palace_01.jpg - Language: Vianden Town Hall — Palauenc05, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vianden_stadhous.jpg - Politics: Chamber of Deputies — Cayambe, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Luxembourg_City_Chambre_des_députés_Nov_2009.jpg - Food: Judd mat Gaardebounen — Jpatokal, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:JuddMatGaardebounen_Beer.JPG - Landmarks: Vianden Castle — Donar Reiskoffer, CC BY 3.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vianden_castle.JPG Six new illustrations have individual .source.json records alongside their JPEGs under /images/country-guides/luxembourg/: - Geography: Schiessentümpel — Vincent de Groot, CC BY-SA 4.0 - History: fortifications after 1814, painting by Christophe-Guillaume Selig, public domain. This is explicitly labelled as a historical painting. - Culture: Echternach procession — David Edgar, CC BY-SA 3.0 - Economy: Maison du Savoir — Acacia7594, CC BY-SA 4.0 - Nature: Upper Sûre dam — Finck Roderick, CC BY 3.0 - People: Edward Steichen portrait — F. Holland Day, public domain File-page links, source descriptions and licence URLs are retained in those records and the guide's visible credits. Images were visually checked together for subject consistency; the people image uses a higher crop to preserve the head. QUIZ REVIEW All 80 existing Luxembourg seed questions were reviewed. 33 read-time corrections address factual mistakes, ambiguous choices, unsupported single-cause or ranking claims, legal distinctions and undated demographic values. Original prompt keys remain the lookup keys. No seed scripts, database rows, lesson IDs or saved progress are changed. scripts/test-luxembourg-guide.cjs checks game coverage, coordinates, discovery, reading integration and corrections. LUXEMBOURG_BASE_URL adds public production routes, assets and all 80 quiz answers to the checks.