Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A Celtic child helps ferry travellers across Lake Lucerne in the days when the village was called Wattawis. Discovering the sheltered bay where palm trees will one day grow, the child names the settlement and sets in motion centuries of history at the foot of Mount Rigi.
A child joins Twain on his famously exaggerated Rigi ascent. Each rest stop reveals a different era of the mountain’s history — from medieval pilgrims to Niklaus Riggenbach’s first cogwheel railway in 1871 — all narrated by the wittiest writer in America.
A magical rose in Weggis refuses to stop blooming, even in December. A child follows its petals through the village’s mild microclimate, past palm trees and fig trees, to discover why the Riviera of Central Switzerland stays warm when the rest of the Alps is buried in snow.
A child hears piano music drifting from the closed Villa Senar on the Hertenstein peninsula. Following the melody through the lakeside gardens, they piece together a composition Rachmaninoff never finished — discovering the beauty that kept the great composer rooted to this place until war tore him away.
Mount Rigi tells her own story: how Albrecht von Bonstetten crowned her Queen in 1479, the daring engineer Niklaus Riggenbach who built Europe’s first mountain railway up her flanks in 1871, and the sunrise that left Mark Twain speechless on the summit.
In the 1960s, the old paddle steamer Gallia is about to be scrapped. A child and the Dampferfreunde must rally the lakeside communities to save her before the last crossing from Weggis — learning that some treasures are worth more than their weight in modern convenience.
Set in the 1890s, when chestnuts were more valuable than milk, a child discovers that the ancient chestnut groves above Weggis hold a secret map. The Cheschtene-Chilbi becomes a treasure hunt through sixty stalls and centuries of harvest tradition.
A child wanders into the old bathing chapel of 1545 on Mount Rigi and follows the Three Sisters Springs underground. Emerging in Mario Botta’s modern spa with its crystal skylights, they experience 600 years of bathing history in one magical subterranean adventure.
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