Lake Lucerne

The lake of the four forest cantons

Lake Lucerne’s German name, Vierwaldstättersee, describes it more usefully than the English: the lake of the four forest cantons, named for Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Lucerne, the founding cantons of the Swiss Confederacy, whose shores it touches. Its shape, branching and irregular rather than a simple oval, was carved by the Reuss glacier at the end of the last ice age, and the result is a lake that reveals a different view around almost every headland, closer to a fjord than to the more open Swiss lakes further west. On a wooded meadow above its Uri arm, Rütli, Swiss tradition places the founding oath of 1291, sworn by representatives of the three original cantons; the historical record is thinner than the legend, but the meadow remains the site of the country’s national day celebrations every August.

Pilatus and Rigi

Two mountains face each other across the lake and dominate it: Pilatus, 2,128m at its highest point, Tomlishorn, on the southwest shore, and Rigi (1,798m) on the northeast, known for generations as the “Queen of the Mountains”. Both are reached by historic mountain railways built for exactly that purpose. The Pilatus railway, opened in 1889 from Alpnachstad, climbs at a gradient of up to 48 percent and remains the steepest cogwheel railway in the world, while the Rigi railway, opened in 1871 from Vitznau, was the first mountain railway built anywhere in Europe. Neither summit requires serious walking to reach, which makes them an easy add-on to a day on the lake rather than a dedicated hiking objective, though both also carry trail networks for anyone who wants to walk rather than ride.

Walking and access

The lake is best explored by a mix of boat and train: paddle steamers still cross it on scheduled routes, connecting Lucerne to Vitznau, Weggis and the villages on the Uri arm, and most walking routes in the area are built around reaching a station or a jetty at one end. Away from Pilatus and Rigi, the Bürgenstock ridge and the hills above Weggis offer quieter, lower-level walking with the lake in view for most of the route. Lucerne itself, at the lake’s northwest corner, is the main rail hub, on the direct line from Zürich and from Bern, with the paddle steamers and smaller lake boats departing from jetties beside the station.