Three stripes in red, white and light blue, almost identical to the Dutch ones, which come from the colours of the lion on its coat of arms.
Every fact about the flag, each with what it means.
Normal flagFIAV symbol: the form of the flag.
Civil, state and militaryFIAV symbol: who may fly the flag.YesIt carries the coat of arms on the cloth.The flag in the words of vexillology and heraldry.
It is a rectangular field with a 1:2 ratio and three equal horizontal stripes.
Each element and how many of the 1,390 flags in the catalogue carry it. In yellow, the rarest.
Every date in its story, at a glance.
They were used as national colours for the first time in 1830
In 1845 a government circular fixed the order of the stripes: red at the top
It came on 23 June 1972
In 1993 another law added the details: two possible shapes
How it was born, how it has changed and what it means.
The flag of Luxembourg has three horizontal stripes of the same size: red, white and light blue. If you put it next to that of the Netherlands, it is hard to tell them apart. The difference lies in the blue, which is lighter, and in the shape, which may be more elongated.
The colours come from the arms of the counts of Luxembourg, from the thirteenth century: a red lion on a ground of white and blue stripes. Those three colours were taken from that coat of arms and arranged in stripes, following the fashion for tricolour flags that had begun with the French Revolution.
They were used as national colours for the first time in 1830, during the Belgian revolution, when the Luxembourgers were urged to show them. In 1845 a government circular fixed the order of the stripes: red at the top, white in the middle and blue below.
The design has barely changed since the nineteenth century, but it took a long time to have a law of its own. It came on 23 June 1972. In 1993 another law added the details: two possible shapes, one shorter (3:5) and one more elongated (1:2), and a well-defined light blue, precisely so as not to confuse it with the Dutch one.
The colours do not each have a symbolic meaning of their own. Everything comes from the coat of arms:
Red
the lion of the coat of arms.
White and blue
the stripes on which the lion rests.
Luxembourgish ships and aircraft carry another flag, the Roude Léiw, “red lion”: the full coat of arms with the lion on the stripes. In competitions like the Tour de France, many fans prefer it to the tricolour.
In 2006 the member of parliament Michel Wolter proposed replacing the tricolour with the red lion, which cannot be confused with any other. The proposal did not go ahead and was definitively withdrawn in 2017.
Although its colours are about eight hundred years old, the flag did not have a law defining it until 1972.
Test what you have read about the flag of Luxembourg.
Text based on the article “Bandera de Luxemburgo” from the Spanish Wikipedia, published under the licence CC BY-SA 4.0.
Sources consulted:
Flag image: Drawn by User:SKopp, Wikimedia Commons · Public domain.
Other flag
Europa
Other flag
Europa
Other flag
Europa
Other flag
Europa
Other flag
Europa
Other flag
Europa
Belgium
France
Germany