Lion Monument
Interesting facts
- Roman numerals under the lion record the toll: about 760 Guardsmen killed and roughly 350 survivors, alongside the names of the officers.
- The dying lion is about 10 metres long and 6 metres high, carved into the back wall of a disused sandstone quarry.
- The memorial was the idea of Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen, a Guard officer who was home on leave in Lucerne when the Tuileries was stormed.
- From 1818 Pfyffer raised money for the monument, mostly from the royal houses of Europe.
- The Latin dedication carved above the lion, Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti, honours the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss.
- Beyond those killed on the day, about 200 more Guardsmen died in prison or in later massacres; some 300 had been away escorting grain convoys.
- According to a popular story, the outline of the niche was shaped like a pig in revenge over a payment dispute, though no records support it.
- A near-identical copy of the lion was carved in 1894 for Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta as a memorial to Confederate dead.
Why it is worth it
On the morning of 10 August 1792, a mob stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. Louis XVI had already fled to the National Assembly and sent word for his Swiss Guard to stand down — but the order reached the courtyards only after the fighting had already started, and by then most of the officers who could have organized an orderly withdrawal were dead. Roughly 760 Guardsmen were killed that day, a number of them cut down after they had already laid down their arms, in a massacre that shocked even revolutionary Paris.
The lion carved into the sandstone cliff above a quiet pond in Lucerne isn't a monument to a victory — it's a monument to men who kept an oath after the argument for keeping it had already ended. The Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen designed the dying lion, pierced by a broken spear and resting one paw on a shield bearing the French fleur-de-lis, but he never set foot in Switzerland to see it made. The actual carving, done directly into the living rock between 1819 and 1821, fell to a local stonemason, Lukas Ahorn, working a face where a single wrong cut couldn't be undone.
Mark Twain visited in the 1880s and called it the most mournful piece of stone in the world. It's worth remembering, standing in front of it, that mercenary service to foreign crowns is exactly the practice Switzerland eventually gave up — a decision shaped in part by watching what happened to men who had nothing to gain from that fight except the promise they'd made.
Getting there
Located in Luzern. Zürich Airport (ZRH) is about 48 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Chapel Bridge 0.8 km · covered-bridge
- Pilatus railway 11.7 km · rack-railway
- Vitznau–Rigi railway 14.2 km · rack-railway
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Lion Monument, or the Lion of Lucerne, is a rock relief in Lucerne, Switzerland, designed by Bertel Thorvaldsen and hewn in 1820–21 by Lukas Ahorn. It commemorates the Swiss Guards who were killed in 1792 during the French Revolution, when revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace in Paris. It is one of the most famous monuments in Switzerland, visited annually by about 1.4 million tourists. In 2006, it was placed under Swiss monument protection.
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