The floating roof
A 113 × 107 m slab reaching 45 metres over the water.
Ermell — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Lisa8217 — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0 · Leonhard Lenz — CC0
If you are not going to a concert, the outside is entirely enough: the roof, the canals and the terrace are the sight, all free, and fifteen minutes covers them. But if a concert coincides with your visit — especially during **Lucerne Festival** in August — book it; the hall's acoustics are among the finest built in the twentieth century and are worth experiencing even on the cheapest seat. The art museum upstairs is middling and can be skipped without loss.
From under the roof itself at the water's edge just after sunset, when the city lights reflect off the metal soffit and the canals at once. The alternative: from the opposite bank near the Chapel Bridge, where the roof reads as a severe horizontal line against the mountains — a handsome contrast of old and new Lucerne in one frame.
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The **KKL** is the one modern building in Lucerne worth standing in front of for a while: designed by the French architect **Jean Nouvel** and built between 1995 and 2000 on the water's edge, right beside the railway station. You recognise it from afar by its roof — a slab of roughly 113 by 107 metres that reaches **forty-five metres out beyond the building, over the square and the water, with nothing holding it up**, becoming a metal sky above the lake it reflects. Nouvel split the building into three blocks and cut **canals of lake water** between them, so the blocks read as vessels at their moorings. The main hall (the "white hall") seats about 1,840, and its acoustics were designed by the American **Russell Johnson** with side reverberation chambers whose doors open and close to change the hall's decay time to suit the music — which is why it counts among the world's finest concert halls. It opened on 18 August 1998, and the following evening Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic gave the festival's opening concert in it. Practically: the plaza, the canals and the lakefront terrace are **open to everyone without a ticket**, and they make the best sunset photograph in the city. The interior needs a concert ticket or a paid architecture tour. On the fourth floor sits the **Kunstmuseum** (art museum) on its own ticket. The summer Lucerne Festival is held here in August and early September.
A 113 × 107 m slab reaching 45 metres over the water.
About 1,840 seats and reverberation chambers that open to tune the sound.
Lake water drawn in between the building's three blocks.
Europaplatz 1, 6005 Lucerne