Ninety seconds on Spreuer Bridge
A seventeenth-century Dance of Death hangs under the roof of this covered bridge, painted panels in which Death walks unnoticed among the living. Spreuer Bridge is quieter than the Chapel Bridge upstream, so you can stop under each panel and read it.
The paintings are Caspar Meglinger's Dance of Death, a baroque cycle completed in 1637 and one of the few of its kind to survive. Forty-five triangular gable panels sit in the roof frame, each made of glued boards and painted in oil on one side.
Death never takes a partner to dance here. He mixes unnoticed among the people, so the game is spotting him. In the priest's panel he walks ahead as a sexton with a bell and a lantern, and in the nobleman's he shoots from hiding with a crossbow, the way William Tell shot Gessler.
Hans Holbein the Younger's Dance of Death was an important influence on Meglinger's cycle. Each panel names its donor in the centre, and the donors' coats of arms sit in the corners.
On the bridge stands the small chapel of Maria auf der Reuss, with a neo-Renaissance front and side windows of stained glass showing Saint Maurice and Saint Catherine. Notice the bend in the bridge beside it: it marks where the two halves meet, the southern one square to the river and the northern one at an angle.
Upstream you look onto the Reusswehr, the needle weir, where the level of Lake Lucerne is still set by hand, by lifting out or slotting in wooden planks called needles. The bridge's name means chaff: the city mills tipped their threshing waste over its parapet into the Reuss.
Walking slowly from the Mühlenplatz end towards the Museum Luzern end gives you the whole covered deck in one pass. The panels hang under the eaves, out of the weather, so the walk works as well in rain as in sun.
Stop under each panel long enough to find the figure of Death hidden in the scene. Then look at the coats of arms in the corners to see which family paid for it. At the chapel, step to the upstream side for the view of the weir.
Museum Luzern, at the far end of the bridge, stages a theatre walk on the Dance of Death: an actor and an audio guide take you to the Mühlenplatz and back in about 50 minutes. It runs only around Lent and All Saints, for groups of three or more; the museum programme lists dates. Other weeks, borrow the museum's self-guided audio tour of the panels.
The roof keeps the deck dim, so photographs of the panels need a fast lens or a higher ISO setting.
The bridge has no toilets or cafés of its own. Public toilets and food are a few minutes away in the Old Town, and free Wi-Fi covers the bridges.
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