Chapel Bridge

Interesting facts

It is considered the oldest covered wooden bridge in Europe and the oldest surviving truss bridge anywhere in the world.

The bridge was built around 1365 as part of Lucerne's fortifications, guarding the town against attack from the lake side.

It was once more than 270 metres long; successive shortenings and land reclaimed along the banks have cut it to about 205 metres.

The octagonal Wasserturm beside the bridge is roughly 30 years older than the bridge and served as a prison, torture chamber, archive and treasury.

The painted gable panels were funded by city councillors, each of whom was allowed to add his own coat of arms to the panel he sponsored.

The 17th-century panels were painted by the local Catholic artist Hans Heinrich Wägmann, mostly on boards of spruce.

Lucerne is the only European city whose wooden footbridges carried painted triangular frames under their roofs, a feature shared by its Spreuerbrücke.

Each painting carried a written explanation beneath the scene, so the bridge worked as an illustrated chronicle for passers-by.

The bridge runs diagonally across the Reuss rather than straight from bank to bank.

The critic and artist John Ruskin made a watercolour and pencil study of the bridge in 1861.

Why it is worth it

For most of its life, the point of the bridge was the paintings hanging under its roof, not the crossing itself. Beginning in 1611, the covered timber structure was fitted with a running gallery of panels depicting scenes from Swiss history and the legends of Lucerne's patron saints, Leger and Maurice — a visual civic history lesson, painted during a period when the Counter-Reformation gave Catholic cities like Lucerne good reason to advertise their saints prominently.

Almost all of it was gone in a single night. On 18 August 1993, a boat moored underneath the bridge caught fire — investigators never pinned down the exact cause, though a carelessly discarded cigarette is the leading theory — and the flames climbed straight into the dry timber roof. About two-thirds of the wooden structure burned, and of the 111 paintings that had survived nearly four centuries, 86 were destroyed outright or damaged beyond recognition. Only 25 could be saved.

Lucerne rebuilt the bridge in eight months, and today's structure is a faithful reconstruction rather than the original object. That distinction matters here more than at most restored landmarks: what burned in 1993 wasn't just wood, it was four hundred years of paintings that can't be replaced, only copied — which is what most of the gallery you see today actually is.

Getting there

Located in Luzern. Zürich Airport (ZRH) is about 49 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

The Kapellbrücke is a covered wooden footbridge spanning the river Reuss diagonally in the city of Lucerne in central Switzerland. Named after the nearby St. Peter's Chapel, the bridge is unique in containing a number of interior paintings dating back to the 17th century, although many of them were destroyed along with a larger part of the centuries-old bridge in a 1993 fire. Subsequently restored, the Kapellbrücke is the oldest wooden covered bridge in Europe, as well as the world's oldest surviving truss bridge. It serves as the city's symbol and as one of Switzerland's main tourist attractions.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Chapel Bridge

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia