Lucerne

The medieval lake town where the River Reuss flows out of the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, one of the most photographed places in Switzerland and a birthplace of Alpine tourism. The old town keeps its painted merchant squares and, above all, its covered wooden bridges: the Chapel Bridge with its stout water tower, among the oldest in Europe, and the older Spreuer Bridge with its grim Dance of Death panels. Above the town runs the Musegg wall with its nine towers, and on a cliff to the north lies the great dying lion carved to mourn the Swiss Guards killed in Paris in seventeen ninety-two. Down at the water the twin-towered court church and the grand lakefront hotels look out to the paddle steamers and the peaks of Pilatus and Rigi. Read the painted lake town at your own pace.