Rigi
Fly here
Queen of the mountains, a 360° panorama over the lakes and a century-old rack railway.
From the basket
Between Lake Lucerne and Lake Zug, the Rigi rises like a great island of green. From the balloon you see why travellers have been drawn to it for so long: set amid the waters, it overlooks the lakes, the hills of the Swiss Plateau and the long chain of the Alps all at once. Its highest point, the Rigi Kulm, reaches 1,797 metres.
Look at its flanks as you arrive from the west. Bands of rock and grass run around it almost level, like ribbons laid one on top of another. Its name comes from them, from an Alemannic word for a layer or a band. The humanists preferred to read in it “Regina montium”, the sovereign of the peaks.
The Rigi has drawn excursionists since the eighteenth century. Two rack railways and a cable car go all the way up, and in winter its slopes welcome skiers. At the very top, a weather station and a transmitter keep watch over the view.
In 1775 the young Goethe climbed it simply to look at the landscape, which was then a new idea. The painter William Turner made several watercolours of it. Do as they did: fly over the summit at dawn, when the lakes light up one by one.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Rigi”.
All around
- Lake Zug, 2 km to the north
- Lake Lucerne, 4 km to the south
- Lucerne, 13 km to the west
- Pilatus, 2128 m, 20 km to the south-west
- Lake Zurich, 24 km to the north-east