Terre Rouge: Luxembourg August 2014

Terre Rouge is a large abandoned steelworks in Luxembourg.

During the 19th century the in the south the small area known as Minett embraced industrial culture. Its this relatively flat area that made the country rich.

An iron ore seam stretches well into northern France and spans 1000 square km. Only 3.7 of these are actually in Luxembourg but due to geology the country had a great advantage. The ore breaks the surface here and is was easy to extract in large quantities which gave them a tremendous advantage over the French miners.

There is evidence that the Celts and Romans discovered this potential but nothing really came of it until 1838. Originally the ore was only of use for steel works due to a high phosphorous content but a system was developed in the UK to remove this around 1870.

The factory that opened in 1872 eventually consisted of a power station blast furnaces and ore bunkers.

There was a huge boom at the turn of the 20th century and the south was prosperous. Mansions regularly popped up and the cities grew. Migrant workers were brought in from southern and eastern Europe in their thousands to cope with the demand. The good times lasted until the seventies when there was a sudden decline in European iron and steel industry.

The blast furnaces shut down in 1977 and were eventually dismantled and partly sold on to Asian countries and are still in use today. In 1997 the rest of the site closed down.

I only visited the ore bunkers seen below, as time was against us. Still a fun relaxed visit.