Ninety seconds on Lion Monument
Give it ten minutes and pair it with something else nearby. Thorvaldsen's dying lion is one carving above a pool in a small park, a quarter of an hour on foot from the old town, and it will not hold an afternoon alone.
Most of this one is the walk to it. The monument sits a quarter of an hour uphill from the old town, off Loewenplatz, in a small enclosed park with a pool under the rock face, and the carving is the only thing in it. Ten minutes at the rail is the honest figure and twenty is worth it if a coach party has just cleared. Thorvaldsen designed it, in Rome, and the work was cut into the sandstone here; the scale reads better from the far side of the water than from directly under it. The park costs nothing and the effect depends almost entirely on how many people are standing in it, which is the one variable a visitor controls, by choosing the hour.
Explore the rest of Lucerne
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