Monopol hails back to the days when shop assistants asked "Are you being served?"
It was originally founded in 1919 and taken over in 1948 by Nicholas "Nic" Scholer.
He believed in commerce de proximité, i.e. neighborhood shops. Shopping should be more than just waltzing in, purchasing one’s groceries, and waltzing out again.
Scholer wanted people who entered his shop to not only find dry goods, long johns and red radishes, but also to meet fellow shoppers - one’s neighbors - and turn shopping into an experience.
The Grands Magasins Monopol sold everything and nothing; some people claim they never had what you wanted but always something you didn’t, which turned out to be an oddly satisfying combination.
Every Luxembourger of a certain age remembers Monopol - most of them fondly.
For some it was the place their young boyish selves first discovered ladies’ underwear. For others it was the place their religion teacher went during lunch break to buy herself booze.
Monopol is a part of Luxembourgish shopping history. It is, alas, a part that didn’t survive.
But if it won’t survive as a shop, it will stay in people’s minds as being Luxembourg’s first attempt at a department store. And now as a series of stone canvases for exciting murals and other exciting events.
