The hemicycle
705 seats in twenty-four languages โ the largest transnational elected chamber.
Diliff โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Photo Claude TRUONG-NGOC โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท FrDr โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท fotogoocom โ CC BY 3.0
Both, by treaty text: Brussels for committees and daily work, Strasbourg for monthly plenaries โ the historically contested border city chosen as reconciliation's founding symbol. The monthly migration forever stirs cost debate; the symbol holds.
As an experience of global citizenship, yes: a chamber of this scale run in twenty-four languages rewards contemplation whatever your passport โ and the gallery reads as the story of a continent leaving two wars. Accompanying students or teens, it is an irreplaceable living lesson.
Tram E from the centre straight to the Parliament stop. Pair with the facing Orangerie (storks and lake) and the Council of Europe and Human Rights Court exteriors โ the European quarter as a coherent half-day utterly unlike old Strasbourg.
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In Strasbourg sits the continent's parliament: the cylindrical glass Louise Weiss building on the Ill, hosting the European Parliament's plenary sessions โ the city chosen as symbol of Franco-German reconciliation on ground they fought over for centuries. Visiting is free and open: the vast hemicycle โ 705 seats in all the Union's languages โ from the visitors' gallery, and the interactive Simone Veil gallery on European democracy's journey in twenty-four languages. In session weeks (about one monthly) live debates can be attended by booking. The building is itself a symbol: a deliberately 'unfinished' glass cylinder โ democracy forever under construction โ set in the European quarter with the Council of Europe and Human Rights Court, the Orangerie park opposite for the day's close.
705 seats in twenty-four languages โ the largest transnational elected chamber.
Architecture saying deliberately: democracy never completes.
Europe's parliament on France and Germany's old battleground.
1 Allรฉe du Printemps, 67000 Strasbourg