The headland view
Lake on three sides with Pilatus straight ahead.
Pilatus09 — Public domain · Dennis G. Jarvis — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Dennis G. Jarvis — CC BY-SA 2.0 · 최광모 — CC BY-SA 4.0
Fastest: **bus 24** from Lucerne station to the Meggen Lerchenbühl stop, then a well-signed fifteen-minute walk — about forty minutes door to door. Nicest: **walk the lakeshore path** from Lucerne (roughly ninety minutes, flat, shaded and free) and take the bus back. On summer weekends a boat calls near the castle. Come on a Sunday if you want the interior; otherwise any sunny day does.
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On a headland pushing out into Lake Lucerne east of the city, set among **a vineyard and a large park**, stands Meggenhorn Castle. Despite its look it is not medieval: it was built between 1868 and 1870 for a wealthy merchant from Mulhouse in the romantic-castle manner the nineteenth century loved. Comtesse Amélie Heine, who bought the estate in 1886, added a **small free-standing Gothic chapel**, modelled on the chapel of the château of Amboise on the Loire and consecrated in 1888. The most curious thing inside is not the furniture but the **Welte Philharmonic organ** installed in 1926: a real pipe organ fitted with a self-playing mechanism that reads perforated paper rolls — a recording machine from before recording. A hundred and four of its rolls survive, cut by leading organists of the day including Max Reger and Marcel Dupré. Restored, it still plays. What matters practically: **the park, the vineyard and the view are free and open all year**, and they are the real reason to come — wide lawns, old trees, the lake on three sides and Mount Pilatus facing you. The house interior, by contrast, opens on a very narrow schedule (summer Sundays only). The castle belongs to the municipality of Meggen and is used for events, so you may find it booked for a wedding.
Lake on three sides with Pilatus straight ahead.
A small Gothic chapel modelled on Amboise.
An instrument that plays itself from rolls cut by Reger and Dupré.
Meggenhornstrasse, 6045 Meggen