From the ‘Casino Bourgeois’ to the Forum of contemporary art

The ‘Casino Bourgeois’ was built in a central area of the capital by architects Pierre and Paul Funck in the years 1880 to 1882. It soon became a cultural and social hotspot in the city. In addition to the gaming rooms, it also had a reading room and a restaurant. Its vast halls were used for all kinds of functions, including lectures, masked balls, plays and cabaret shows, concerts and the ‘salons’ of the Cercle Artistique, and many societies held their meetings there too. The first highlight to this activity came when Franz Liszt made his last public appearance on 19 July, 1886. Among the other landmark events in its history, we may further mention the presence of Winston Churchill in the Great Hall on 15 July, 1946.

The ‘Société du Casino Bourgeois’ was wound down in 1959. Later on, the building was purchased by the State and rented out to the Cultural Circle of the European Communities, founded in 1954. In 1959, the latter had built onto the building’s south front the glass and steel pavilion by Luxembourg architect René Mailliet and known today as the ‘Aquarium’. The Casino Luxembourg, now called the ‘Foyer Européen’, remained a centre for cultural and social events for the European Communities in Luxembourg up to the end of 1990.