Gletschergarten

The Gletschergarten, or Glacier Garden, is a natural monument and museum at Denkmalstrasse 4 in Lucerne, Switzerland, close to the Löwendenkmal. The site preserves glacial potholes, which are deep cylindrical hollows ground into the sandstone bedrock by meltwater and stones beneath a glacier during the last Ice Age, when the Reuss glacier covered the region. The potholes were discovered in 1872 by the owner of the land, Josef Wilhelm Amrein-Troller, while he was digging a wine cellar, and he opened the site to the public in 1873. Alongside the potholes, the garden preserves fossils from a subtropical sea that covered the area around 20 million years ago, including palm leaves, shells and a sea-cow-like marine mammal skeleton. The museum, housed in a Swiss chalet-style building, explores the geological history of Lucerne's landscape and the history of the museum itself. It contains a historic collection of minerals, stone models, a relief model of Switzerland and exhibits on the climate history of central Switzerland. A highlight is the Hall of Mirrors, a late 19th-century labyrinth of mirrors set in a wooden pavilion, which was built for the 1896 Swiss National Exhibition in Geneva and later moved to Lucerne. The site has been maintained and expanded over the years, with walkways and a lookout tower providing views over the city. The visit combines outdoor trails through the potholes with indoor galleries, and the approach is part geological and part historical, showing both how the ice shaped the landscape and how early naturalists studied it. The site is next to the Bourbaki Panorama and the Lion Monument, and visitors can see all three in a single outing.