In the glass cabin of the Hammetschwand lift, you ascend 153 meters vertically in less than a minute.
Tellskapelle
Bells mark the hour above the rock where legend says Tell once leapt to shore.
On a narrow ledge of rock at the foot of the Axenberg cliffs, the Tellskapelle marks the spot where William Tell allegedly leapt from Gessler's boat during a storm and escaped his captors. The chapel was built in 1879 and 1880 on the Tellsplatte, a site already named in the 15th-century White Book of Sarnen. Four frescoes by the Basel painter Ernst Stückelberg line the interior, tracing the legend from the Rütli oath to the death of Gessler in the Hohle Gasse.
No road reaches the chapel directly. Visitors arrive by paddle steamer from Brunnen, or walk down from the Tellsplatte hotel car park on the Axenstrasse. Just above the chapel hangs Switzerland's largest carillon, its bells marking the hour since 2001. Across the water, 4.3 kilometres away, lies the Rütli meadow, where the oath that founded the confederacy was supposedly sworn.