Lion Monument★★
Frei, Gletschergarten nebenan 13 CHF
Mark Twain called it "the saddest and most moving piece of rock in the world" — and he was right.
★★★ Lion Monument
Carved into a rock face above a small pond is a dying lion (1820/21, after a design by Bertel Thorvaldsen). It commemorates the approximately 760 Swiss Guards who fell in 1792 during the storming of the Tuileries in Paris, defending French King Louis XVI. The lion lies on a shield with the Swiss coat of arms, a broken lance protrudes from its side. The silence at the pond, the detail of the sculpture, and the tragedy of the story — the interplay is profoundly moving.
Denkmalstrasse 4. Freely accessible, around the clock. In the nearby Glacier Garden (13 CHF) there are glacial potholes from the Ice Age and a mirror maze.
