Les meilleurs hôtels à Lucerne

Picture the cliche of Switzerland in your mind and you've got a handle on Lucerne and its environs. Big mountains. Edelweiss. Quaint villages. Heidi hasn't been spotted in a while, but you get the idea. Because Lucerne captures the Switzerland of the world's imagination, it draws a lot of tourists. They come to see attractions like the Water Tower, which was built circa 1300 as part of the city wall. It's been everything from a treasury to a torture chamber since and, as the Lucerne tourism types claim, it's the most photographed monument in Switzerland (although the flower clock in Geneva has got to rival it). Other hot spots include the Richard Wagner Museum (he lived here in the later part of his life), a fairly big Picasso museum and the "Dying Lion of Lucerne," a monument etched in rock above the town. The Lion is the city's symbol; the monument pays tribute to Swiss mercenaries who died in the French Revolution fighting for Louis. Nearby, the Glacier Garden shows us that twenty million years ago Lucerne was a subtropical palm beach. Today, it's the gateway to alpine splendor. Skiing and snowboarding are big business in the country; the official tourist board even posts snow reports on the Web daily through Spring.