The oldest wooden bridge in Europe, and it's most beautiful when no one else is there.
Museggmauer
Six hundred years of stone, and the whole city laid out below.
The Museggmauer has stood over Lucerne's rooftops for more than six hundred years. Built on a sandstone ridge after the Sempach War, the 870-metre wall formed the city's outer ring of fortifications. Of the original thirty towers, nine remain.
Four are open to visitors: the Männliturm, Zytturm, Wachturm and Schirmerturm. The Zytturm houses the oldest tower clock in central Switzerland, built in 1535, its face large enough to be read by fishermen on the lake. By tradition, the Leodegar bell rings the hour one minute before every other clock in the city. A relic from the Middle Ages, when only the full hours counted.
Walking the battlement path between towers takes about thirty minutes. The views shift constantly: red rooftops, the river, the lake basin, Pilatus. Alpine swifts and bats nest in the stonework. Entry is free. The wall is open April to November.
A city that built this wall has earned the right to ring first.
Usually visited together
Pale rose stucco and a silence that outlasts the crowds on Kapellbrücke.
Painted facades, fountain squares, and bread shops that haven't changed in decades.
A pasta counter near the station where the fillings change by the morning.
Sixty-seven painted panels above the water, each one a reminder that nobody crosses this river forever.
More in Lucerne
A castle above the rooftops, reached by funicular through the trees.
Brass bands echo off medieval facades at five in the morning, and the city does not sleep until Ash Wednesday.
A circle of painted snow that has not stopped falling since 1881.
Gelato eaten with the lake for company.