Lucerne City Tour & Lake Cruise

Lucerne is small enough to cross on foot and old enough to have layers. This half-day walk takes the layers in order, then puts you on the water. Start at the Chapel Bridge, built in 1365 and the oldest covered wooden bridge in Europe. A fire in 1993 destroyed most of the seventeenth-century paintings in its rafters; your guide points out the scorched survivors and what was lost. From there into the old town, where guild houses wear their trades in painted frescoes, and Weinmarkt square, where the Swiss Confederation renewed its founding oath in 1332. The Jesuit Church nearby was the first large baroque church in Switzerland, finished in 1666 and still startling inside. Climb to the Musegg Wall, the 1386 fortification with nine surviving towers. Its Zyt clock holds an old privilege: it is allowed to strike one minute before every other clock in the city. The walk ends at the Lion Monument, cut into a rock face in 1821 for the Swiss Guards killed defending the Tuileries. Mark Twain called it the saddest piece of stone in the world. Then an hour on Lake Lucerne, Pilatus on one side, Rigi on the other, mountains rising straight out of the water. Around two kilometres of easy walking.