. The first festival, in 1938, was performed barely 10 minutes away, on the lawns of the house where Wagner and Cosima lived. The house is now a museum (richard-wagner-museum.ch), which, among other things, contains the most famous staircase in musical history – the one where, on Christmas morning 1870, Wagner quietly lined up an orchestra before waking his wife with a new composition, the lustrous, rapturous Siegfried Idyll. Near the central railway station, the Rosengart Collection of fine art (rosengart.ch) is a treasure trove of late Picassos. Yet more startling, in a way, is the art that covers so many of the walls in the old town. There's a concentration of murals around Weinmarkt square. My own favourite is on the façade of a 16th-century pharmacy: a vibrant, serpentine design that radiates rude good health, but also bears the maudlin slogan 'Amor medicabilis nullius herbis' – a paraphrase of a line by Ovid, meaning, roughly, 'There ain't no cure for love.' Mount Pilatus glowers over the city and can be reached by the world's steepest cogwheel railway (pilatus.ch). But for those with a head for serious heights and a taste for the sublime, a day-trip to the Jungfraujoch and the Sphinx Observatory (jungfrau.ch), more than 11,000ft above sea level, is unforgettable.){kind=link}
It’s not all about mountains, high finance and punctual trains – dive into Lucerne and you’ll discover plenty more
In Lucerne the other day, though I was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, I stepped into a Chinese restaurant in the old town. The restaurant was empty apart from a chap polishing a wine glass who looked up and asked in perfect English: “Are you perhaps looking for Mr Wagner?”
“I am.”
“He’s just over there,” said the waiter, gesturing with a tilt of his head towards a small, modestly framed picture on the wall.
And so he was. The great Richard Wagner himself, scowling severely and looking a little flushed thanks to the rosy glow cast by the silk lantern-style lighting.