Lucerne, the lake and the mountains above it

Lucerne is the place many people picture when they picture Switzerland, and it is easy to see why. A medieval town on the shore of a lake, a wooden bridge across the river where it leaves the water, church towers, painted houses, and all around the lake a ring of mountains, the Rigi on one side and Pilatus on the other. It is almost too obliging, a town arranged as if for a postcard, and yet it is a real and busy place, and it carries the attention well.

The bridge and the lion

The Kapellbrücke, the Chapel Bridge, is the image of the town. It is a long covered footbridge of timber across the River Reuss, built in the fourteenth century as part of the town's defences, and often described as the oldest covered wooden bridge in Europe. Under its roof hung a long series of paintings, 158 of them.

On 18 August 1993 a fire broke out, which began on a boat moored beneath the bridge, and destroyed about two-thirds of it. Of the original paintings, only thirty could be fully restored. The bridge was rebuilt in eight months, at a cost of some 3.4 million Swiss francs, and reopened in April 1994. Even its date of birth is a little uncertain: some accounts give 1333, others the 1360s, and the town is content to let the argument run, since either way the bridge is very old indeed. Most visitors today walk across it without knowing that much of what they are walking on is younger than they are.

A short walk away is the Lion Monument. It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were killed defending the Tuileries Palace in Paris on 10 August 1792, during the French Revolution, and it shows a great lion dying. It was designed by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and carved in 1820 and 1821 by Lukas Ahorn. Its inscription gives the numbers of the dead and of the survivors in Roman numerals, though modern research suggests the figure for the dead may be too high. Mark Twain, in A Tramp Abroad, called it "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world". He was not a man easily moved.

Up the mountains

Lake Lucerne is a long, branching lake among the mountains, and the boats that cross it are one of the best things about the town. The trip by water and the climb by rail fit together naturally, because the railway begins on the shore where the boat comes in. One of them will take you to Vitznau, on the lakeshore at the foot of the Rigi, and from Vitznau a cogwheel railway climbs the mountain. It opened on 21 May 1871 and is generally described as the first mountain railway in Europe. At first it ran only as far as Staffelhöhe, below the top, and the railway's engineers had to finish the job in a second stage. By 1873 it had reached the summit station, Rigi Kulm, at 1,752 metres, and from the top the view takes in the lake, its arms and its towns, and, on a clear day, a long line of the Alps beyond. The Rigi has long been called the Queen of the Mountains, and the name has stuck.

Across the lake is Pilatus, whose cogwheel railway, opened in 1889, is often called the steepest in the world, with a gradient of up to forty-eight per cent. Its passengers spend much of the journey trying not to look down, and failing.

Winter holidays that include Lucerne

Both holidays in the catalogue that include Lucerne are winter tours, by their titles.

Just You's six-night Switzerland's Scenic Railways and Alpine Winter Wonders is the one that goes up the Rigi. Its places include Zurich, Interlaken, Zweisimmen and Bern, Lucerne, Vitznau and Rigi Kulm, and Brig, Chur, Grindelwald, Eigergletscher and the Jungfraujoch.

Travelsphere's six-night Winter in Switzerland includes Lucerne along with Zurich, Kleine Scheidegg, Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen and Interlaken, Montreux and Chillon Castle, Maison Cailler and Gruyères.

In winter the mountains around the lake, with snow on them, look their part. Walk the Chapel Bridge early in the morning, before the crowds, visit the lion, and then take the train up the Rigi and look down on it all.