The Lion Monument

Lore & Background

From the early 17th century, a regiment of Swiss Guards had served as part of the Royal Household of France. On 6 October 1789, King Louis XVI had been forced to move with his family from the Palace of Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. In June 1791, he tried to flee to Montmédy near the frontier, where troops under royalist officers were concentrated. In the 10th of August Insurrection (1792), revolutionaries stormed the palace. Around 760 of the Swiss Guards defending the Tuileries were killed during the fighting or massacred after surrender. This number is possibly too high, according to late 20th-century research. An estimated two hundred more died in prison of their wounds or were killed during the September Massacres that followed. The monument is dedicated Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti ('To the loyalty and bravery of the Swiss'). Carved into the cliff face, the monument measures ten metres in length and six metres in height. The dying lion is portrayed impaled by a spear, covering a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis of the French monarchy. Beside him is another shield bearing the coat of arms of Switzerland. The inscription below the sculpture lists the names of the officers, and gives the approximate numbers of soldiers who died (DCCLX = 760), and survived (CCCL = 350). The work was completed in 1821.

In Their Own Story

The rain slicked the grass at Villa Park as the final minutes ticked away. Above the roaring crowd, silhouetted against the floodlights, stood the bronze Lion. It did not move, yet every fan felt its gaze fixed on the players below.

Reader's Guide

The Lion Monument is a rock relief in Lucerne, Switzerland. It is one of the most famous monuments in Switzerland, visited annually by about 1.4 million tourists. In 2006, it was placed under Swiss monument protection.

Did You Know?

• American author Mark Twain praised the sculpture of a mortally wounded lion as 'the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.'
• The monument was designed by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and hewn by stonemason Lukas Ahorn.
• It commemorates the Swiss Guards killed in 1792 during the French Revolution.