Being a tourist in my own city Part 1: Löwendenkmal

We all know this: Because you live in a certain place and call it home, it makes you looks differently at your city. You don't see it as a place of beauty anymore, you think of it more in a convenient kind of way. I was writing about this already earlier this week when I was passing the Museggmauer here in Lucerne. But there are so many beautiful place here in the neighborhood that I have not given proper attention as yet, I decided to start an ongoing series on the beauty around me. Just to NOT look at the city like 'where is the closest by supermarket', or 'how do I get to the trainstation in the fastest way', but to look at it through the eyes of a tourist.

The Löwendenkmal

Located just slightly off the main roads in Lucerne, I only discovered this beautiful stone-cut statue a couple of weeks back when I going for some coffee and I decided to follow all the tourists to see where they were going. I was stunned! This 6 meter high and 10 meter broad stone lion is just lying there in the wall and I had NEVER even known that it was there, even though I pass this street so often.

Made as a symbol to honour the fallen soldiers in the French revolution in the 1800s the words carved above Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti meaning to the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss this is actually a beautiful yet supersad momument.

Now I am not really an art person, but the whole setting of this Lion is just humbeling. A pond before the mountainwall with trees sheltering it from the outside world is for some reason special. Even though there is not so much to see to just this one gigantic statue, it is the whole setting that makes it different. When you see the tourists marching in this park, posing for the Lion for the perfect selfie and marching out again I can only knod my head of disunderstanding. Your need the feeling to let sink in.

I guess I might turn into an art person in the end after all ;)