The St.Martin’s mon­u­ment reminds us of a for­mer pre-Chris­t­ian event hap­pen­ing at the loca­tion “Hel­leges­teen” (mean­ing holy stone). he small round build­ing, sim­i­lar to a lit­tle tem­ple, is sit­u­at­ed at the bot­tom of the Sen­ninger­berg on the “rue des Romains”, an old Roman road, lead­ing from Treves to Lux­em­bourg. The open col­umn cir­cle allows a glimpse on the stone stat­ue depict­ing St. Mar­tin. On a cubic pedestal beside the fig­urine of the bish­op is rep­re­sent­ed a lit­tle angel. The sculptor’s (the priest Joseph Bertrang) inscrip­tion is in Latin and refers to St. Martin’s jour­ney to Nieder­an­ven in the year 384.

Inscrip­tion on the pedestal of the mon­u­ment St Martin

The leg­end say­ing that an angel did encour­age the suf­fer­ing saint: “Sanc­tus Mar­t­i­nus afflic­tus angeli lae­ta Con­so­la­tione aerec­tus Con­solectvraf­flic­tos”, mean­ing: St. Mar­tin had been com­fort­ed in his pain by an angel to com­fort the distressed.On the site of the mon­u­ment, sanc­ti­fied in the year 1931, there had been a small chapel until the 17^th cen­tu­ry. The altar block had been trans­ferred to the chapel of Sen­nin­gen and for the fol­low­ing decen­cies a sim­ple wood­en cru­ci­fix marked the holy site.

View from the “Hel­leges­teen”

From the “Hel­leges­teen” you have a beau­ti­ful view over the land­scape. His­tor­i­cal pic­tures show the old view on Sen­nin­gen and Nieder­an­ven and the steep affer­ent “rue du Kiem”.

The old steep con­nec­tion road between Sen­ninger­berg and Sen­nin­gen, part­ly still with its cob­ble­stones pavement.

This old con­nec­tion between Sen­ninger­berg and Nieder­an­ven was already inte­grat­ed into the Roman road net­work. The old “Kieme” (mean­ing paths) were part of a for­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, allow­ing to the Roman sol­diers to trans­port effec­tive­ly their bag­gage and war material.

The “Kiem” com­ing from Arlon, crossed the actu­al City of Lux­em­bourg and Pfaf­fen­thal, con­tin­ued over the “Weimer­shof” and lead on its way up to the actu­al high­way on the Sen­ninger­berg. From there it steeply went down into the val­ley of Sen­nin­gen and Niederanven.

Old view from the “Hel­leges­teen” on the “rue du Kiem” and Niederanven

Lat­er on a new con­nec­tion road between Sen­nin­gen and Nieder­an­ven was then con­struct­ed as an alter­na­tive to the old steep way. The new “route de Trèves”, also run­ning along the slope to Sen­ninger­berg, allows with its ser­pen­tines a longer but eas­i­er trip than before. A splen­did row of chest­nut trees had been set up on both sides of the road, spend­ing an effec­tive pro­tec­tion from sun and rain to the old trans­porters and their horses.

Chest­nut Avenue — Dur­ing the World War II some trees had been felled by Ger­man sol­diers in order to slow down the Amer­i­can advance. After the war the trees had been replaced.