Glacier Garden

The Glacier Garden, the Gletschergarten, sits a few steps from the Lion Monument and is one of the oldest natural attractions in Switzerland. It began in the 1870s, when a Lucerne family clearing ground for a wine cellar uncovered a series of enormous round holes in the sandstone. These turned out to be glacial potholes, carved by meltwater and stones swirling under the ice at the end of the last ice age, roughly twenty thousand years ago. The family kept digging, opened the site to visitors and built a small museum around it, and it has been a Lucerne favourite ever since. The garden shows that the ground under the city was once the floor of a glacier, and before that the shore of a warm, shallow sea. Fossilised palm leaves, shells and ripple marks found in the rock date from a time when Lucerne looked more like a subtropical coast than an Alpine lake. The site combines a walk through the potholes and rock gardens with an indoor museum, a lookout tower and a mirror labyrinth, so it can fill a good part of a morning or afternoon.

Start outdoors. A path and a series of walkways lead you down among the potholes, some of them several metres across and deep enough to swallow a small room. Panels explain how swirling meltwater drove stones round and round like a drill, grinding the cylinders into the sandstone. Beside them the rock face carries the fossils: palm leaves pressed flat, shells and the ripples of an ancient shoreline.

Seeing a palm leaf in the rock of a mountain town is one of those small shocks that stays with you, and children usually get the point at once. A tower at the top of the garden adds a view over the rooftops and the lake.

Indoors, the museum fills in the story with models, old photographs, geological displays and a collection that reaches back to the founders' time. One highlight is a large historic relief model of central Switzerland, made in the eighteenth century by a Lucerne officer, which shows the mountains around the lake in a form that was remarkable for its day.

Another is the mirror labyrinth, a maze of angled mirrors and carved wood inspired by the Alhambra in Granada and built for a national exhibition at the end of the nineteenth century. It is a gentle, funny piece of Victorian entertainment, and it is surprisingly easy to lose your bearings, so allow a few minutes and a little patience.

Plan the visit with the Lion Monument next door. The two sights belong together, since the Lion is carved from the same sandstone and the Garden explains the rock it was cut from. Many visitors take the Lion first, then step across for an hour or ninety minutes here, and walk on to the Bourbaki Panorama or the Old Town afterwards.

Opening hours follow the season and the garden is generally open every day, with longer hours in summer, so check the current times before you set out. Paths can be slippery after rain, so wear shoes with grip.

Because so much of the visit is under cover, the Glacier Garden is one of the best choices on a wet day, though the outdoor section is nicest when it is dry. It is also one of the few Lucerne sights that works equally well for a couple, a family with small children and a solo traveller who likes a good story about the land. Tickets are sold at the entrance and on the venue's own site, and the museum is small enough that you will not feel rushed.