Lucerne's Lion Monument and the Swiss Guards of 10 August 1792

What the monument commemorates

The Lion Monument (Löwendenkmal) in Lucerne is a memorial to the Swiss Guards who died in the storming of the Tuileries Palace in Paris on 10 August 1792. Lucerne Tourism describes it as a ten-by-six-metre work in a rocky grotto in a park, created in honour of the guardsmen who were defending King Louis XVI of France that day.[1] The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, in its article on the sculptor, describes the lion as wounded and "still defending the French shield as it dies".[3]

It is a monument to a specific event in the French Revolution, and to soldiers who were in a foreign king's service, which is why, as SRF put it in 2021, it has been contested since it was made.[4]

10 August 1792 at the Tuileries

SRF describes the Swiss Guards as mercenaries in the service of the French king.[4] On 10 August 1792, revolutionaries stormed the king's residence in Paris, which the Swiss were defending; Lucerne Tourism calls the result "the virtual annihilation of the Swiss Guard".[1] A 2021 report by SRF, the Swiss public broadcaster, explains the background: France already had a parliament, but the king and Marie-Antoinette still held political influence, and the crowd stormed the palace to depose him for good. SRF says the guardsmen were the only armed men still defending the king, against several tens of thousands of revolutionaries.[4]

How many guards, and how many died

The numbers depend on which source is speaking, and the gap is large enough to matter.

Lucerne Tourism's English and German pages both put the guardsmen at about 1,000.[1] SRF's 2021 report says around 900, and says the inscription under the monument gives the dead as more than 700, a figure the Lucerne historian Jürg Stadelmann calls too high: by his findings, 300 to 350 guardsmen died in Paris.[4] An earlier SRF report, from 2017, gave 300 to 400.[5] XTOUR does not choose between them; the inscription is the monument's own claim, and the lower figures are a historian's later assessment.

Who made it

The idea came from Karl Pfyffer von Altishofen, an officer of the Guards who was on leave at home in Lucerne on 10 August 1792. Lucerne Tourism says he proposed the cliff below the Wesemlin as the site and raised the money.[1] SRF adds that he had to wait, because from 1798 to 1815 Switzerland was under Napoleon's influence and anything loyal to the monarchy was unwelcome, and that the funds came in part from European princes and royal houses.[4]

The design is Bertel Thorvaldsen's, but the carving is not. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland says Pfyffer won the Danish sculptor for the project in 1818, that Thorvaldsen's plaster model reached Lucerne in 1819, and that Lukas Ahorn cut the lion, at about five times life size, directly into the wall of a former quarry by 1821.[3] SRF tells a fuller version: the commission first went to the Solothurn sculptor Urs Pankraz Eggenschwiler, who fell from the work site and later died of his injuries, and the young Lukas Ahorn from Konstanz finished it.[4] The dictionary also notes that Thorvaldsen saw the finished monument only in 1841.[3]

Lucerne Tourism compresses this into one line, saying the lion "designed by the famous Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen, became a reality in a little over a year and was inaugurated in 1821".[1] SRF gives the date of the inauguration as 10 August 1821, and says European aristocrats travelled to Lucerne in numbers for it.[4]

Reading the monument

According to SRF, the Latin words above the lion read "Helvetiorum fidei ac virtuti", to the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss. SRF also describes two shields: the one behind the lion carries the Swiss cross of the guards, and the one under its paw the Bourbon lily of the French royal house.[4]

The same report sets out why the monument is contested. The engraving beneath it names only the officers who fell, not the ordinary soldiers, and Stadelmann has called the site a "propaganda place" for the mercenary trade. He proposes reading the lion also as a memorial to the whole history of Swiss mercenary service, in which young men went to foreign wars for about 500 years while a few families grew rich from it.[4] Lucerne Tourism frames it differently, as a commemoration, a work of art or a memorial depending on one's point of view, and quotes Mark Twain's description of the lion as "the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world".[1]

The panels at the site

The interpretation panels have been renewed at least once. SRF reported in 2021 that, for the 200th anniversary, the City of Lucerne replaced the outdated panels at the entrance with seven panels spread across the park, each on one aspect of the story.[4] Lucerne Tourism's listing, read in October 2026, refers to ten new interpretation panels covering eight thematic areas, in German and English, with French and Italian versions through a QR code.[2] XTOUR has not established whether these describe the same installation counted differently or a later one.

Visiting

Lucerne Tourism's listing gives "Free admission" and says the monument can be reached on foot from the railway station and old town, or by bus number 1 or 19 to the Löwenplatz stop.[2] XTOUR does not publish opening hours, accessibility details or crowd levels for the site. The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland places it beside the Glacier Garden.[3]

Lucerne's other landmark history, the 1993 fire and the painted gables of the Chapel Bridge and Water Tower, has its own guide.