Its small territory is full of contrasts. The striking diversity of landscape and architecture, languages and culture make Switzerland a special world. It is a classic tourist country. Everywhere in the Alpine Republic is good - in Geneva, Lausanne, Bern, and in small mountain towns located at an altitude of 1,500-1,800 m. Small towns of Switzerland, many of which are located near lakes, in mountainous areas or surrounded by forests, are real natural health oases.
Interestingly, Switzerland has the highest concentration of rich millionaires. About 8% of all European millionaires live in this country. At the end of 2002, there were 175,000 people in Switzerland with assets of $1 million. This means that every 40th resident of the Alpine Republic is a millionaire.
Lucerne - a fairytale city
The journey to the land of magnificent mountains, valleys and clean lakes begins from Kyiv. In a few hours of flight, an airbus will deliver our curious tourist to Zurich Airport - Kloten, which handles 25-30 million people annually. Transportation of guests to Zurich hotels is thought out to the smallest detail. They do not have to wait for a scheduled bus or taxi. The guest only needs to make a small effort - to find a shuttle bus on the airport square, which will take him to a hotel of the second financial center in Europe after London for free in 10-15 minutes (by the way, by train you can get to the city center in 7 minutes).
Zurich is the air gateway to Switzerland. You get on a train and in an hour and a half you are in one of the most beautiful medieval cities - Lucerne. It is known for its rich history (for several centuries the city was the unrecognized capital of Switzerland) and its local classical music festival, traditionally held in August. Its founder is the famous conductor Arturo Toscanini. The festival was made famous by many outstanding ensembles and soloists, in particular Sviatoslav Richter and Isaac Stern. For two weeks the city is filled with the sounds of music that captivates the ear and soul. The main concert venue is a five-tier concert hall built on the lakeshore by the master of modern architecture Jean Nouvel and American acoustician Russell Johnson.
With the arrival in 1999 of talented art manager Michael Haefliger, the festival's conservative style was enriched with contemporary music programs. In recent years, Lucerne has witnessed performances by Tibetan monks, musicians from the Indonesian island of Bali, and also featured works by little-known to us but popular in Europe composers: Italian Luciano Berio, Hungarian György Kurtág, German Wolfgang Rihm, and Japanese Toshio Hosokawa.
The life of the city, located on the shores of Lake Lucerne, or Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, pulsates among winding streets, around cozy cafes, near shops and museums. A river flows out of the lake, crossed by two of the oldest pedestrian bridges in Europe - the Chapel Bridge with a water tower and the Mill Bridge. When you walk across them, raise your head and look at the colorful paintings on the vaults. The Chapel Bridge is decorated with scenes from the history of Lucerne, while the Mill Bridge is painted with 'Dances of Death' - probably to teach future generations about the mortality of all living things.
Many of Lucerne's buildings, both religious and civil, are examples of magnificent medieval architecture. These include old buildings with painted facades on Weinmarkt Square, the town hall on Kornmarkt Square, Switzerland's oldest residential wooden building, Rotenburgerhaus (early 16th century), a Gothic cathedral in the eastern part of the city, and the five-star hotel 'Lucerne Palace' known in Europe. It is this high-rise building, located on the lakeshore, that gives the city its special charm, being, along with Jean Nouvel's modern music complex, the architectural dominant. Notice the structure that sits on one of the several peaks surrounding the city. From a distance, it somewhat resembles the 'Swallow's Nest' in Crimea.
By the way, Mother Nature must have worked for more than one million years to erect here three mountain peaks unlike each other (Rigi, Pilatus and Titlis), framing the city from several sides. And it seems that they are literally a few steps behind the pointed towers of the Hofkirche church. Pilatus is considered the most beautiful. The mountain rises above Lucerne to a height of 2,120 m, and from here a breathtaking panorama of the Swiss Alps opens up.
Many Europeans come to Lucerne to see one of Thorvaldsen's outstanding sculptural works - the 'Dying Lion'. In this monument, the Danish master tried to immortalize the death of the Swiss who defended the French king Louis XVI at the Battle of the Tuileries in August 1792. It is no coincidence that Mark Twain called the statue of the 'king of beasts' the saddest lion in the world.
Lucerne is known to many tourists as a European center of museums with extraordinary themed exhibits. You will see this for yourself if you visit the Ice Age Museum, which takes us back to ancient history, the Transport Museum, where you can touch old exhibits, as well as the Picasso Museum.
Warm canton
The city of Lugano is located in the part of the country where Italians mainly live. This is an excellent holiday destination, attracting with its mild climate, picturesque mountain landscapes, magnificent lakes Lugano and Maggiore, lush subtropical vegetation and valleys. It is not without reason that Ticino is called the 'southern drawing-room' of Switzerland. It is true that Lugano loses to Lucerne architecturally. Here the buildings are more uniform, and the urban appearance was formed over the past few centuries. But the southern resort of the country has its own highlights: beautiful cathedrals, arches, blood-red geraniums in squares and orange roof tiles.
Romanesque-Gothic cathedral of San Lorenzo, one of the most striking examples of the Renaissance, the church of San Rocco (built in the 14th century) with its famous altar and frescoes by Discopoli, the graceful church of Santa Maria degli Angeli (15th-16th centuries) with the frescoes "Crucifixion of Christ" and "The Last Supper" by the artist Bernardo Luini, the Palazzo Civico in the magnificent Civico Park, where open-air concerts are held in summer - all these are architectural masterpieces of Lugano. Lugano also has a museum of fine arts, which exhibits art collections of Western European masters of painting. The city is home to Villa Favorita, which houses a private collection of paintings once owned by Thyssen-Bornemisza.
Lugano, like many Swiss cities, is surrounded by mountains with poetic names - Monte Brè (923 m) and Monte San Salvatore (912 m). As a rule, foreigners prefer to view the second mountain. In a few minutes two funiculars (fare 17 francs) take guests to an altitude of 900 meters, from which a panorama of Lugano opens, small towns and mountains - the Swiss and Italian Alps, as well as lakes, on the shores of which recreation areas have been created.
And on the opposite side of San Salvatore there is a unique casino: it is territorially located in Switzerland, but administratively it is subordinate to Italy. Apparently, the revenues also go to the Italian treasury. By the way, the famous Swiss architect Botta is now building a new casino building here. Getting into the world ruled by gambling is very simple - tourists are delivered from Lugano by boats.
Mount San Salvatore is unique in that many hiking trails popular among Swiss and guests of the country begin here. In about two hours you can get on foot (alternative options - boat and train) to Melide - the famous theme park of the region "Switzerland in Miniature", where the most interesting and picturesque monuments of the country are recreated in miniature 1:25. The fishing village of Morcote with the amazing Scherrer Park, the castles of Bellinzona, protected by UNESCO, are also attractive tourist points of the canton of Ticino.
And Ascona is called the pearl of southern Switzerland. In the old central part of the city, magnificent monuments of the Middle Ages have survived to this day. The city reached its greatest prosperity in the 19th-20th centuries. Here, on one of the most beautiful hills near Ascona - Monte Verità - a group of idealists organized their colony. Among the settlers were the leading figures of Europe - artists, poets, philosophers: Gustav Jung, Erich Maria Remarque, Paul Klee, Isadora Duncan. They were united by a passionate desire to change the world and return to pristine nature. Today, traditional international festivals, art exhibitions, and weeks of classical music are held here. Life in the cities of the canton of Ticino is bustling until late autumn. And with the arrival of winter, tourists move to Alpine ski resorts. But that is another topic.