Luxembourg has known various territorial formats in the past. Let's focus on the current borderlines and bordermarkers.
The delimitation of the eastern border
with its range of bordermarkers no. 1 to 75 at the former tripoint
Belgium-Germany-Luxembourg (1843-1919) was agreed upon in a treaty
between Prussia and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1818.
After WWI Belglum gained a strip of territory to the east and the
tripoint shifted to the east. Between both tripoints (old and new), the
delimitation and bordermarkers (no. 52-75 ) remained the same.
The range of bordermarkers between Schengen and the current bedelu-tp got
a renovation update in 1984. New bordermarkers, often at new spots,
replaced the old ones though some of the original bordermarkers are
still in use.
The southern border with its range
of bordermarkers is the second oldest: established by the Treaty of
Kortrijk of 1820 which delimitated post-Napoleon France and the United
Kingdom of the Netherlands. That kingdom comprised nowaday Netherlands, Belgium and
Luxemburg. A range of unnumbered bordermarkers was installed from the
North Sea up to Schengen.
But: after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, Germany took hold of the Alsace region which
led to a new tripoint from 1871 to 1919. That results nowadays in two
sets of bordermarkers along the southern border. The first one (from W
to E) is the range no. 1 to 49 (but no numbers on the markers, only on
the maps) and the second one is the numbered range no. 1 to 241 which
must have been installed in the German episode. Both ranges comprise many intermediate markers.
The western border dates from
the breaking up of Belgium and Holland. Luxembourg remained in dutch
hands and the BELU-border was demarcated in 1843 with 286 iron cast markers
and many intermediate borderstones. In design they are identical to the
bordermarkers between Belgium and Holland, also installed around 1843.
The DELU-bordermarkers (including no. 52-75 along the current BELU-border)
This range has received
little attention of bordermarker-explorers before. In 2022 Jannis
Deeleman, Marc van der Steen and myself started a full survey of these
bordermarers. At present (march 2024) this work is still in progress.
Coordinates: are
available in this .kmz-file (Google Earth) and this gpx-file. You can
see them online on this map. For smartphones this version is more
suitable.
Note: the suffix -coe means: coordinates online established (with the
Géoportail.lu 5K-map) but these bordermarkers have yet to be visited to
check existance and position. The suffix -nfod means: not found or disappeared.
The BELU-bordermarkers (of 1843, see the DELU-section for the current BELU-markers dating from 1818)
This range has attracted more visitors in recent years, the beautiful landscape being a bonus.
Coordinates: are
available in this .kmz-file (Google Earth) and this gpx-file. You can
see them online on this map. For smartphones this version is more
suitable.
Note: the suffix -coe means: coordinates online established (with the
Géoportail.lu 5K-map) but these bordermarkers have yet to be visited (again) to
check existance and position. The suffix -nfod means: not found or disappeared.
Online maps
Luxembourg: https://geoportail.lu/fr/ (choose Cartes Portail Général)
Belgium - current maps: Topomapviewer.ngi.be
Belgium - old maps: https://www.cartesius.be/ -> click on MYCARTESUS and then GALLERY (Note: at present you
need a work-around to get the Gallery-part working in your browser.
What worked for me: use Firefox, in Firefox go to > settings >
privacy & security > HTTPS-Only Mode. Check if the option
""Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows" is active, then click on
"Manage exceptions" and fill in http://www.cartesius.be and click on
"Turn off". Then restart Firefox.)
France: https://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/carte
Germany - Rheinland-Pfaltz: https://lvermgeo.rlp.de/geodaten-geoshop/viewer
Germany - Saarland: https://geoportal.saarland.de/