Lucerne's Chapel Bridge and Water Tower: the 1993 fire, the paintings and what the tower was

What the bridge and the tower are

The Chapel Bridge is a covered timber footbridge over the River Reuss in Lucerne, and the Water Tower is the octagonal stone tower standing in the river beside it. Lucerne Tourism describes the bridge as linking the Lucerne Theatre on the south bank with St. Peter's Chapel on Rathausquai, passing the tower on the way.[1] The City of Lucerne, which runs a website on its wooden bridges, says the bridge takes its name from that chapel and once ran to the Freienhof, a building on the left bank that no longer exists. The tower is older than the bridge: both the City and Lucerne Tourism say it was already standing when the bridge was built.[1][2]

The two are often treated as one landmark, but they have different histories and, today, different access. The City says the bridge is "accessible at all times" while the tower "is not accessible to the public".[4]

How old the bridge is, and why the answer is not one date

Lucerne Tourism calls the bridge "an incredible 650 years old".[1] The City is more careful. Its bridge page says the building date is not known exactly: there is an indirect reference in 1347, the first written mention is from 1367, and tree-ring dating of cross-beams and corbels shows it was built no earlier than 1356.[2] XTOUR does not convert either statement into a construction year.

What stands today is also not a single medieval structure. The City says the bridge was 279 metres long at first and was shortened several times from 1833, with the present angled bridgehead dating from 1838 and another 15 metres lost when the Rathausquai was built in 1898; it now measures 205 metres. It was placed under a federal monument preservation order in 1913 and completely taken down and rebuilt in 1968/69. In the 14th century it served as part of the town's fortifications as well as a footway, which the City gives as the reason for its unusual route across the river and the higher parapets on the lake side.[2]

The fire of August 1993

The fire started in the night of 17 to 18 August 1993. The City's account says it destroyed around two thirds of the bridge, including much of the roof and supporting beams, and that spiders' webs in the gables helped it spread through the roof. The two bridgeheads and the supporting structure were saved, and the fire brigade kept the flames off the Water Tower with water cannon from Bahnhofstrasse, although the heat burst the tower's sandstone surface.[3] Lucerne Tourism likewise says the two bridgeheads and the tower were all that could be saved.[1]

The cause was never established. The City says the investigation was closed on 20 July 1994 for lack of evidence, and that a carelessly discarded cigarette setting fire to a boat moored under the bridge is considered the most likely cause.[3]

Rebuilding was decided by the City Council on the day of the fire. According to the City, construction approval came in mid-November 1993, the work was finished on 11 April 1994 at a cost of CHF 3.4 million, and the bridge reopened on 14 April 1994.[3] Lucerne Tourism gives the same reopening date and calls the eight months of rebuilding a record.[1] The City's fire page says the burned traces and damaged sections are marked on the bridge today, that smoking on it is strictly prohibited, and that sheets of fire-resistant glass now separate the paintings under the roof.[3]

The triangular paintings

The paintings hang in the gables under the roof, each a triangle fitted to the roof truss. The City's cycle page says the city chronicler Renward Cysat put his proposal for the Chapel Bridge to the councils in 1599, that the council decided to go ahead in 1611, and that this cycle was to show worldly rather than religious subjects. Council members were invited to sponsor panels; a sponsor family normally paid for two, painted on both sides, and its name and coat of arms appear on them.[6][5] Lucerne Tourism tells the same story more briefly: Cysat finalised his ideas in 1611, the public purse could not pay, and well-to-do citizens sponsored the panels.[1]

The cycle reads in two directions. From the left bank, about 76 panels show scenes from Swiss national history; from the right bank, 40 panels show the life of St Leger and 29 the legends of St Maurice, Lucerne's two patron saints. The City thinks the whole cycle was probably entrusted to the painter Hans Heinrich Wägmann, who was paid in 1614 for four panels, but says repainting makes individual hands hard to identify.[5]

The Chapel Bridge cycle is one of three. The City's overview dates the biblical cycle of the Court Bridge to around 1552 to 1580, the Chapel Bridge to around 1614 to 1624 and the Dance of Death on the Chaff Bridge (Spreuerbrücke) to around 1616 to 1637, over 460 paintings in all. The Court Bridge itself no longer exists; its panels are kept in the City Archives.[6]

How many paintings burned: two sets of figures

The two official sources do not give the same numbers, and the difference is worth knowing before repeating either.

The City's bridge and fire pages both say that of the 111 original paintings on the bridge at the time of the fire, 86 were burned either partially or beyond recognition.[3][2] Lucerne Tourism's page says 147 of the original 158 panels were still in existence before the fire, that 110 of them were directly affected, and that some two-thirds of those either went up in smoke or suffered severe damage.[1] The City's page also records an earlier loss: some paintings went into the river when parts of the bridge collapsed in the high water of 1741.[2] XTOUR does not reconcile the two counts; the City's figures come from the bridge site the City itself runs.

The City's restorer page says the paintings hanging on the Chapel and Chaff Bridges, roughly 100 in all, are originals that a conservator inspects and cleans twice a year, with one to three restorations a year approved by the Monument Preservation Department.[7] It does not say how that squares with the fire figures above, and XTOUR has not read a panel-by-panel list.

What the Water Tower was used for

Both sources agree on the outline: a tower in the river that served over the centuries as a prison, a treasury and an archive.[4][1] They disagree on when it was built and whether it was a defensive work.

Lucerne Tourism says the tower was erected around 1290 to 1300 and formed part of the town's lake-facing fortifications.[1] The City's page gives its construction date as unknown, somewhere between 1200 and 1339; it reports art historian Heinz Horat's hypothesis that it was built soon after 1262 by the Abbot of Murbach as a show of power, says there are no documents or archaeological findings to prove it, and dates the oldest roof timbers to 1339. It then states that the tower was unlikely to have been a defensive tower "and as such was not part of the city's fortifications". Lucerne Tourism gives a height of 34.5 metres; the City says about 35 metres, with a circumference of about 39 metres, a figure both share.[1][4]

The City's account of the inside runs from the bottom up: a dungeon with no door, reached only through a hole in the floor above, then the treasury, a small secret chamber, the tower room and the timber clerestory under the roof. It says the rooms served as a prison and place of interrogation between 1397 and 1803, that two state officials were found in 1758 to have been stealing from the treasury for ten years, and that the tower is first mentioned as an archive in 1401, with the City Archives kept in its tower room until 1919.[4]

Visiting: what the pages say

The City's tower page says the Water Tower is not open to the public and that anyone who wants to see the inside must contact the Lucerne Artillery Association, which has been the tenant since 1937, keeps a display of weapons in the old treasury and offers guided tours.[4] XTOUR does not know the tour dates, languages or terms.

For the bridge itself, the City's page says it is accessible at all times.[4] XTOUR does not publish opening times, accessibility details or crowd levels for either structure.

The other Lucerne landmark with a story of its own is covered in the Lion Monument and the Swiss Guards of 1792, and the choice between two mountain railways that the operators describe reaching from the city in Mount Pilatus or the Rigi from Lucerne.