The story of this place
Built around 1333 as part of Lucerne's fortifications, the Kapellbrücke zigzags across the Reuss River and is the oldest surviving truss bridge and covered wooden bridge in Europe. Its interior gables once held 158 seventeenth-century paintings depicting local history and saints. On the night of 18 August 1993 a discarded cigarette sparked a fire that destroyed most of the bridge and 78 of the paintings—a national tragedy. Lucerne rebuilt it within eight months, salvaging what art survived. The octagonal Water Tower beside it, dating to about 1300, once served as prison, treasury and torture chamber.