Summary: We review the recently constructed ‘double field theory’ which introduces in addition to the conventional coordinates associated to momentum modes coordinates associated to winding modes. Thereby, T-duality becomes a global symmetry of the theory, which can be viewed as an ‘\(O(D,D)\) covariantization’ of the low-energy effective space-time action of closed string theory. We discuss its symmetries with a special emphasis on the relation between global duality symmetries and local gauge symmetries.