A dying lion cut into rock, and a hush visitors keep without being told to.
Swiss Museum of Transport
Touching the locomotives was always allowed.
The Swiss Museum of Transport opened on the shore of Lake Lucerne on 1 July 1959. Its founder, Alfred Waldis, a former railway apprentice with the Swiss Federal Railways, ran it on one unusual rule: visitors could touch the exhibits and photograph them, at a time when museums generally forbade both. It became Switzerland's most visited museum within its first year and remains so today, holding around three thousand objects, among them locomotives, aircraft, road vehicles and cable cars.
The Hans Erni Museum, devoted to the Lucerne painter's work, and a planetarium sit alongside the halls of engines and carriages. The Swiss Chocolate Adventure carries visitors through Lindt's history and ends with a taste of the result.
The museum has its own railway stop and its own landing stage on the lake, ten minutes by boat from the city centre. A single day rarely covers the whole collection.