About this journey

Liège-Guillemins station stands at the heart of a major rail junction in eastern Belgium. The current station building, designed by Santiago Calatrava, is defined by a monumental arch of steel, glass and white concrete, 160 metres long and 32 metres high, completed at a cost of €312 million. The station opened on this site in May 1842 on the grounds of a former Guillemites convent, initially connecting the Meuse valley to the upper Ans station, and gained its first international connection in 1843, linking Liège to Aachen and Cologne. Today the station serves nine tracks across five platforms and receives high-speed Eurostar and ICE services on HSL 2 and HSL 3 at up to 300 km/h, alongside the regional and intercity services that use the conventional network heading south.

This journey follows the IC 33 intercity route, which runs from Liège-Guillemins through Gouvy and onward to Luxembourg City. The line travels into the province of Luxembourg in Wallonia, one of the most sparsely populated parts of Belgium, with a density of around 29 inhabitants per km² recorded in 2007. Gouvy itself sits in this quiet upland landscape, where the Ourthe Orientale river has its source. The former railway tracks extending beyond Gouvy toward Bastogne have since been converted into a RAVeL cycle and pedestrian path, marking the contrast between this rural terminus and the monumental urban station where the journey begins.