Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child discovers the Lustgarten and accidentally time-travels to 1392, witnessing the fateful card game. To return home, they must find the Holy Blood monstrance, following clues hidden in the chapel’s eight oil paintings that depict the legend scene by scene.
A magic Willisauer Ringli grants wishes when you crack it, but this one is unbreakable. A child journeys from the bakery on Hauptgasse 26 all the way to Castle Heidegg to learn the original secret recipe from Martha Peyer’s ghost — and the meaning of patience.
Strange music echoes from the old prison cells in the Obertor. A child discovers that Niklaus Troxler’s first jazz poster has come alive, and famous musicians — Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman — step out of the posters for one magical midnight concert in the small Swiss town that became the Mecca of Free Jazz.
A fire salamander guardian has protected Willisau since the town’s founding in 1302. A child helps it through four devastating fires — 1375, 1386, 1471, and 1704 — each time saving one precious thing: the Obertor, the monstrance, the recipe, the church tower.
A child becomes the night watchman of the last surviving tower in Willisau’s ring wall. Peering through its arrow slits into different centuries, they witness the town’s four fires, market days, the Holy Blood procession, and jazz concerts drifting up from the Hauptgasse below.
It is 1653 and the innkeeper’s child must carry a secret message from the rebel leaders at the Gasthaus Adler to the peasant army in the Entlebuch. Slipping past Lucerne’s bailiff at the Landvogteischloss, they learn what it costs to fight for justice when the powerful push back.
Each of the five red plant beds in the chapel garden hides a riddle. A child must solve all five to reveal a hidden passage under the Hauptgasse connecting the Obertor to the Untertor — a secret path through four centuries of Willisau’s history and faith.
A child visiting the Willisau Jazz Archive touches one of Troxler’s famous posters and is pulled into a world where colours become sounds. To find the way back, they must compose a piece using Willisau’s landmarks as musical notes — the Obertor as bass, the Hauptgasse as melody.
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