Luzern with Jutta

 Well for starters what a great night of sleep! I slept for 9 hours which is truly a rare event! Amazing how much better you feel when you are caught up on sleep.

Today we walked about Luzern with our Swiss guide Jutta. She was amazingly knowledgeable about the city and can speak German, English, French, and Spanish..She says she can understand most Italian but not to good at speaking it. We managed fine with her doing english. I will say I am rather jealous of her language skills. 

Luzern has an interesting history.. originally the first structure was a Benedictine monastery (around 950) ultimately the city began settlement when a church was built and the town began to be settled. It sounds like the city was a trading hub between the Mediterranean areas of Europe and the Rhine river valley. Much of the initial wealth of the city was derived from taxes levied on trade goods as they traversed through town. The wealth allowed it to build defensive walls around the city. While most of the walls were torn down in the 1800s as the city grew there is 1km of wall still standing from the 1400.

An interesting part of the history is the wall extended down to the River and crossed the river as a bridge. The bridge was designed to defend against attacks from the lake. The original system connected the Benedictine Monastery to a small chapel in town and the bridge (named chapel bridge) connected to a Franciscan convent and Monastery across the river. 

The Tower on the bridge served as a jail and torture chamber in its day as well… 

After about 1850 and the advent of rail transport Luzern became more known for tourism and the old city wall was taken down to give more room for city growth. Our guide told us the city has a population of around 88,000 people but gets about 9 million visitors annually. I would believe it from all the various people we see around town.

One of the other interesting sites is the lion carved into the rock.

The lion is a memorial to the dead Swiss Guards that defended Louis the sixteenth at the time of the French  revolution. About 1000 soldiers in the guard were killed defending Louis. Now the Swiss Guard confines itself to defending the Pope. It sounds like back then they were a top tier mercenary force. 

A few more pics from the tour…

In side of a building designed copying the Palace of the Medici family Florence, Italy. It later became a Jesuit monastery.

Water control for Lake Luzern. This is the Reuss River which flows out of Luzern. The lake level is maintained by adding or taking away individual pieces of wood. This water management system dates back to the 1800s and is still in use today. Jutta said a Swiss philosophy is if it is working don’t mess with it. In spring when there is ice and snow melt in the mountains they will remove most all of the wood pieces that make up the dam. 

Mt Pilatus from Luzern. This is where we are headed to tomorrow… looks like a fun spot to go visit…More tomorrow.

So thanks to Jutta we were never Not Quite Lost today :-)

Dale and Ila