Schwanenplatz

About this audio guide

This guide to Schwanenplatz in Lucerne follows the English painter J. M. W. Turner, who kept returning to a hotel on this exact square in the early eighteen forties, chasing one view across the lake. It traces how a window built for hotel guests and steamboat passengers became the vantage point for some of his most groundbreaking watercolor work, and the mountain across the water that held his attention for summer after summer. Look toward the far ridge to see the view that would not let him leave.