Up the hill a short distance from the Lucerne lakefront is a sandstone sculpture created in 1820. The sculpture was designed by
Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and sculpted by Lukas Ahorn. The Lion commemorates the Swiss Guards killed in 1792 in the French Revolution. The Lion is another symbol of Lucerne which received even more notoriety when Mark Twain wrote about it and called it "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world." . The sculpture really is remarkable. I find it hard to believe that so much emotion could be portrayed by one facsimile of a Lion, but it is quite remarkable and good.
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| Surrounded by trees in it's own grotto, the Lion is carved into a sandstone cliff |
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| The wrinkled nose and brow and the pleading eyes serve to give the Lion sculpture deep and sorrowful emotion |
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| The sorrow on the Lions face and the protruding spear can both be seen clearly from this angle |
Tour buses make the Lion one of their regular stops of the sights of the city. Sometimes I'm not sure if the tourists know what they are seeing or is this just another stop their tour company has arranged for them because it's an important sculpture.
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| A tour bus load of tourists take pictures of the Lion of Lucerne |
