Remich is the tourist heart of the Luxembourg Moselle, a small, charming town overlooking the river that proudly calls itself 'the pearl of the Moselle'. Here the landscape is completely different from the rest of the country: no castles perched above ravines or Ardennes forests, but a wide, bright valley, slopes covered in terraced vineyards and a calm river that forms the border with Germany. Life revolves around water and wine: the long esplanade by the Moselle invites you to stroll, pleasure boats wait at the quay and, beneath the streets, kilometres of cellars hide where crémant, Luxembourg's sparkling wine, quietly matures.
Although it is Luxembourg's smallest municipality by area, Remich packs in a surprising amount: Moselle cruises to Schengen or Grevenmacher, underground cellars to visit and taste in, riverside terraces, cycle paths and trails through the vineyards, and a winemaking tradition dating back to the Romans. Its location in the 'three-country corner' —a stone's throw from Germany and France, and very close to symbolic Schengen— makes it a perfect base for discovering the whole valley.
This guide takes a practical look at Remich: the riverside promenade, crémant cellars such as the historic Caves St Martin, Moselle cruises, the Wine Route, the remains of the old medieval gate and nearby trips to Schengen and the wine villages. A bonus you get in every destination in the country: public transport is free, so getting here from the capital and moving around the valley costs nothing. Remich is the sunny, relaxed, wine-loving side of Luxembourg, ideal for a getaway built around good food and good wine.
Remich is one of the oldest inhabited places in Luxembourg: it began as the Roman villa of 'Remacum', a settlement on the banks of the Moselle where a Roman road passed and vines were already being grown. After Rome withdrew in the 5th century, the area passed to the Franks; King Pepin the Short gave estates in the area to Benedictine monasteries in the 8th century, and in 882 the Normans razed the settlement. In the Middle Ages, Remich was walled (fortifications documented from 952), and from that period it retains the St Nicholas Gate. Louis XIV's troops demolished the defences in 1687. Remich's modern history is one of wine and river: the arrival of the railway and the bridges, the canalisation of the Moselle and the rise of crémant made the town the tourist capital of the valley. We cover all of this on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The wine-growing southeast along the Moselle, with its vineyards, crémant and the village of Schengen, where the agreement for a Europe without borders was signed in 1985, and the iron and steel south, with the Terres Rouges of Esch-sur-Alzette and the Belval blast furnaces turned into a university.
Read the history of Moselle Valley and the South →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 9 activities in Remich. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Remich's story begins long before Luxembourg existed. When the Romans conquered Gaul, the Moselle valley became one of their most important arteries: goods travelled along the river, and roads ran along its banks linking the great city of Augusta Treverorum (today's Trier, in Germany) with the rest of the empire. On a quiet bend of the river's left bank, where the valley widens and the slopes face the sun, a Roman settlement called Remacum took shape. After centuries of change, that Latin name became today's Remich.
Here the Romans did what they did best on the Moselle: they planted vines. Winemaking in the valley, now the hallmark of Remich and the whole region, goes back to that era. The mild climate, the angle of the slopes and the limestone soil turned out to be ideal for vines, and Moselle wine was already prized at the tables of neighbouring Trier, one of the empire's capitals in the West. Country villas and wine presses grew up around the settlement, and life there prospered thanks to the river and to trade.
When Roman power collapsed and the legions withdrew from the region in the 5th century, Remacum didn't disappear. Like so many places on the Moselle, it kept its people and its name, which slowly changed over time. Here the move from Antiquity to the Middle Ages was a transition, not a break: the river kept flowing, the vines kept bearing fruit and the small port remained a stopping point. That unbroken history over a thousand years makes Remich one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in today's Luxembourg.
After the fall of Rome, the region came under the Franks, the Germanic people who went on to rule much of Western Europe under dynasties such as the Merovingians and the Carolingians. Like many estates in the valley, Remich became part of the Frankish crown's lands. In the 8th century, King Pepin the Short, father of Charlemagne, gave estates in the area to Benedictine religious communities. The monasteries thus became major owners of vineyards and keepers of winemaking know-how, and much of the Moselle's wine was made to supply abbeys and churches.
But the early Middle Ages also brought terror. In 882, at the height of the great Viking raids along Europe's rivers, the Norsemen sailed up the Moselle and destroyed the settlement of Remich. These warriors from the north spread panic from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the continent by using its waterways, and they showed the riverside towns no mercy. The destruction of Remich in 882 is one of the earliest dated events in its history, and it shows how exposed these communities on the open river were.
As everywhere in Europe, the answer to that danger was fortification. Over the course of the Middle Ages, Remich built walls and defences to protect itself from attacks as well as from the Moselle's frequent floods. The town's fortifications are recorded as early as 952, which confirms that after the Norse raid the town was not only rebuilt but also walled, and grew into a settlement of some importance on the riverbank.
Through the Middle Ages and the early modern period, Remich grew as a small wine and trading town, with its river port, its markets and a life shaped by wine and by the goods that passed along the Moselle. The town kept its walls, with several gates. Only one survives today: the Porte St-Nicolas (St Nicholas Gate), dedicated to the patron saint of fishermen and boatmen, a nod to the town's ties with the river. St Nicholas, deeply revered across the region, was the natural protector of a community that lived facing the water.
Remich's location came at a price, though. It sat in a land of shifting borders that Europe's great powers fought over for centuries. The Duchy of Luxembourg passed in turn to Burgundian, Spanish, Austrian and French hands, and the Moselle valley lay again and again in the path of armies. In 1687, during the wars of King Louis XIV of France, French troops tore down Remich's fortifications, as they did in many other towns in the region to weaken enemy defences. The town lost its medieval walls, and little remained beyond their memory and the St Nicholas Gate.
Despite wars, occupations and floods, Remich remained a wine town tied to its river. Vines were still the backbone of its economy, and the Moselle was still its main route to the outside world. This quiet resilience, the ability to rebuild again and again without losing its winemaking identity, runs through the town's long history, from the Roman settlement to the modern town.
Modern Remich is a product of the 19th and 20th centuries and of three big changes: bridges, the canalisation of the river and the rise of sparkling wine. For centuries, crossing the Moselle to the German bank meant taking a boat. In 1866 the first permanent bridge over the river opened in Remich, a leap forward that tied the town more closely into the region's trade routes and strengthened its role as a crossing between Luxembourg and Germany. That first bridge and the ones that followed shaped the town's growth. One of them was destroyed in the Second World War and replaced by a wooden footbridge until the current bridge was built in 1958.
The second big change was the canalisation of the Moselle, completed in the 1960s. By regulating the water level with locks, it finally made the river navigable all year round, opened it to large vessels and laid the groundwork for the river tourism that is now one of Remich's mainstays: the pleasure cruises that leave from its esplanade. Once tamed, the river stopped being a flood risk and became an attraction.
But the change that made Remich famous was crémant, the sparkling wine made using the traditional method. In the early 20th century, pioneering wine houses began making quality sparkling wines here. Caves St Martin was founded in 1919 and dug almost a kilometre of underground galleries into the limestone on the edge of town to age its wines. Together with other wineries in the valley, it put the Luxembourg Moselle on the map for fine sparkling wine. The Crémant de Luxembourg appellation, officially recognised in 1991, cemented that tradition and made Remich its tourist showcase.
In the 21st century, Remich has turned its history and its landscape into its greatest assets. It is Luxembourg's smallest commune by area, at just 5.3 km², and home to just over four thousand people, yet every year it welcomes crowds of visitors drawn by its relaxed atmosphere, its food and, above all, its wine. The long esplanade along the Moselle, the crémant cellars, the river cruises and the Wine Route that runs through town have made Remich the valley's top tourist destination, the 'pearl of the Moselle' (Perle vun der Musel).
The town proudly keeps its folk traditions alive, many of them tied to the cycle of the wine year and the seasons. Carnival (Fuesend Karneval), with its parade and the burning of the 'Stréimännchen', a straw figure that stands for winter, and the 'Buergbrennen' bonfire mark the end of the cold months. In autumn, the grape harvest and crémant festivals celebrate what the vineyards have produced. These customs connect today's Remich with centuries of winemaking life on the riverbank.
The town also carries a symbolic meaning that goes beyond its own borders. A few kilometres upstream lies Schengen, where agreements signed in 1985 and 1990 abolished internal border controls across much of Europe. There is a kind of poetic justice in the fact that this milestone for a borderless Europe happened right here, in the same Moselle valley where armies marched for centuries and walls went up and came down. Remich has been a Roman settlement, a target for Norse raiders, a walled town and a disputed border post. Today it is a quiet wine town at the heart of a united Europe, where the river that once divided countries now joins them under the same sky of vineyards.
