The Luxembourg City History Museum illustrates the thousand-year history of the City of Luxembourg with both permanent and temporary exhibits.
Like the city itself, the museum successfully combines ancient architecture with modern extensions. It is housed in four restored houses from the 17th to the 19th century which still bear archeological traces from the Middle Ages. Examples of how to combine old buildings with the expectations of museum visitors are the floating glass façade and the panoramic lift which offers extensive views of all floors. The huge glass cage of the lift gives up to 65 people views of the rock foundations on the lower levels as well as views of the city's Grund district and Rham plateau on the upper levels, revealing the stages of Luxembourg's history over the centuries. Also of interest are the ancient, vaulted cellars which were discovered during excavation work in the early 1990s.
The floors below the street level entrance house a permanent collection illustrating the town's architectural and urban development while the upper floors are reserved for temporary exhibitions. A multimedia system extending throughout the building documents the history of the town including its cultural, political and social development. It provides access to some ten thousand documents and almost sixty audio-visual sequences.
References:The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.
The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.
The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.