The town was mentioned for the first time in 12 April 1128 in a message for Pope Honorius II.[1]
For a long time Esch was a small farming village in the valley of the Uelzecht river. This changed when important amounts of iron ore were found in the area in the 1850s. With the development of the mines and the steel industry the town's population multiplied tenfold in a couple of decades. In 1911 the steel- and iron-producing company ARBED was founded.[2] The development of the steel industry, especially in the south of the country, provided Luxembourg with sustained economic growth during the second half of the 19th century.[3]
In the 1970s, as a result of the steel crisis, the mines and many of the blast furnaces were shut down, the last one, in Esch-Belval, definitively halting its operations in 1997.[3] The blast furnaces were replaced by an electric furnace that is fed with scrap metal rather than iron ore.[4]
Today the industrial wastelands on Belval left behind by the steel industry, are being redeveloped and converted into a new, modern town quarter. New cultural buildings such as the cinema Kinepolis Belval in the Belval Plaza shopping mall[5] and the Rockhal, Luxembourg's biggest concert hall have been made.[6]
The area around the old blast furnaces will host different structures of the University of Luxembourg, many research centres and the national archives.[7]
Esch is governed by its communal council, consisting of 19 councillors. Communal elections take place every 6 years, under a system of proportional representation. Currently the mayor is Christian Weis, of the Christian Social People's Party (CSV). The governing majority on the council consists of the CSV, the DP and The Greens.[8]
Esch is home to the Esch Conservatory of Musi.[13]
The city has the longest shopping street in Luxembourg.[14]
Culture
Film production
The Venice filmset in Esch (2001)
In 2001, a Luxembourg film production company had depicted a 40,000 m2 and 15 meter high backdrop built for the feature film Secret Passage with John Turturro on the Terre Rouge, a site of a former steelwork in Esch-sur Alzette. The filmset represents the contemporary Venice of the 16th century with a 600 meter long copy of the Grand Canal and 118 house facades. The "Venice-sur-Alzette" was built for around 5 million Euro and was one of the largest open-air film sets in European film history.[15]
Esch is connected by the bus lines 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 12, 13, 15, and 17 of the communal public transport company T.I.C.E[17] (transports intercommunales du canton Esch/Alzette, intercommunal transportation of the canton Esch/Alzette), their maintenance depot and headquarter is situated in Esch, and Esch also is connected by lines 307, 312, 313 and 314 of the R.G.T.R.[18]
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