The Villa Vauban is a neoclassical villa built in 1873 in Luxembourg City Park. After a five-year renovation phase, the villa reopened on May 1, 2010 as an art museum of the City of Luxembourg.
The villa is named after the Frenchman Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban (1633-1707), master builder of a 17th century fortress that originally stood on the site of the villa.
The London Conference of 1867 saw the dismantling of the Luxembourg fortress ring, which was replaced by the current inner-city green belt designed by French landscape planner Édouard François André. In 1868, the glove manufacturer Gabriel Mayer (1818-1905) from Lorraine acquired the property in the area of the former Vauban fortress. In 1873, Mayer had the villa built in the classicist style according to plans by the Luxembourg architect Jean-François Eydt, but Mayer sold the property to the Lorraine industrialist Théodore de Gargan as early as 1874.
The City of Luxembourg acquired the property in 1949 and converted it between 1950 and 1952 for use as a municipal art collection. Between 1952 and 1959, the Court of Justice of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) temporarily occupied the villa before it was used as an exhibition space for a municipal art collection until the 1990s. From 1992 to 1995, the Villa Vauban became a temporary residence of the Grand Duke. In 1995, the Villa Vauban was reopened as a municipal art museum; from 2004 to 2010, it was renovated and extended to 2,000 m² of exhibition space by architects Diane Heirend and Philippe Schmit.
Collections
The Villa Vauban collections include works by Dutch painters of the 17th century (Golden Age), including Cornelis Bega, Gerrit Dou, Jan Steen and David Teniers the Younger; French landscape painters of the 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier and Jules Dupré, as well as paintings, sculptures and etchings by other European artists of the 17th to 19th centuries. Most of the exhibits come from donations from three former private Luxembourg collections.
