Things to do
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Chapel Bridge
A covered wooden footbridge of about 1365 crossing the Reuss at an angle, with a water tower beside it and painted panels in the roof gables. Two thirds of it burned in 1993 and the rebuild is honest about which panels are original.
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KKL Luzern
Jean Nouvel's concert hall of 1998 beside the station, with a roof that cantilevers out over the water and a canal cut in under it. The main hall is regarded as one of the best acoustics in Europe.
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Lion Monument
A dying lion carved into a rock face in 1821 for the Swiss Guards killed defending the Tuileries in 1792, ten metres long in a quiet pool of water. Mark Twain called it the saddest piece of stone in the world and the description has stuck.
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Mount Pilatus
The mountain closing the lake's western end at 2,128 metres, climbed by the steepest cogwheel railway in the world at a gradient of forty-eight per cent. The usual circuit goes up by boat and train from Alpnachstad and down by cable car to Kriens.
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Rigi
The mountain on the other side of the lake at 1,798 metres, served by Europe's first mountain railway, opened in 1871. It is a broad grassy summit rather than a peak, which is why the view runs the full circle from the Alps to the Black Forest.
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Swiss Museum of Transport
The most visited museum in the country, on the lake shore east of the centre, covering rail, road, water, air and space with real locomotives and aircraft rather than models. It absorbs a wet day completely.
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Chateau Guetsch
A turreted hotel of 1888 on the hill above the town, reached by its own funicular, with the old town and the lake laid out below the terrace. It was a favourite of Queen Victoria's circle and it is still the view address here.
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Museggmauer
Eight hundred and seventy metres of fourteenth-century town wall with nine towers standing on the hill above the old town. Four towers can be climbed in season, and one holds the city clock, which is allowed to strike a minute before all the others.