City trip to Lucerne: Highlights in winter

Every Jan­u­ary, the city of Lucerne is trans­formed into a sea of thou­sands of lights in the evening: The LiLu Light Fes­ti­val takes place from 15 to 25 Jan­u­ary 2026. On a tour around the Lake Lucerne basin, you can admire 24 light instal­la­tions free of charge: Trees full of glow­ing exot­ic birds, house facades that turn into comics or a giant plan­et in the mid­dle of the park. You’ll find plen­ty of food and drink stalls: A punch here, some chips there – they’ve got it all! But the real high­light of the Light Fes­ti­val is the “Soul” show in the Jesuit Church. This requires a tick­et (the rest of the LiLu is free), and is worth every pen­ny. The spec­ta­cle of light and music is breath­tak­ing for young and old alike.

Lucerne has so much to offer fam­i­lies out­side the Light Fes­ti­val and is well worth a vis­it all year round. I high­ly rec­om­mend the Lucerne Muse­um Card, which is valid for two con­sec­u­tive days and allows you to vis­it eight muse­ums. We find these par­tic­u­lar­ly great for fam­i­lies:

Museum tips for your city trip

Swiss Muse­um of Trans­port, Lucerne

Get hands-on, dis­cov­er and learn new things about traf­fic, trans­porta­tion and ener­gy. You can eas­i­ly spend an entire day at the Swiss Muse­um of Trans­port, so make sure you allow enough time to try every­thing out!

Game­o­ra­ma

At the Game­o­ra­ma you can try out all the dif­fer­ent games from back then and now. A real high­light for all gen­er­a­tions. Please note: Make sure to reserve a time slot to ensure that you can vis­it the muse­um.

Muse­um Luzern

The Muse­um Luzern com­bines nature, his­to­ry and cul­ture. There’s loads to try out and dis­cov­er for kids.

Glac­i­er Gar­den

Accom­pa­ny “Lily + Börni” through the rock world in the Glac­i­er Gar­den, on the trail of the Ice Age. The stand­out attrac­tion is a cool mir­ror maze.

Lucerne is packed with muse­um high­lights. So that we can enjoy it all at a relaxed pace and process our impres­sions, we split our vis­its over two days. If you want to take a break, stroll through the city to the “Him­mel­rich” quar­ter.

The fam­i­ly-friend­ly neigh­bour­hood with cafes, restau­rants, a large play­ground and numer­ous shops is well worth a vis­it. We can warm­ly rec­om­mend the fol­low­ing spots in par­tic­u­lar:

Stroll and feast on your city trip

Baumhu­us book shop

The lov­ing­ly designed children’s book shop Baumhu­us invites you to browse and read. Every child will find their new favourite book here – not least thanks to the warm advice of the own­er.

Pas­ta dreams

Hap­pi­ness is in store for the whole fam­i­ly at Pas­ta Razzi restau­rant. The home­made ravi­o­li and pas­ta are just as much a dream as the deli­cious piz­zas. The store in the Him­mel­rich quar­ter also has a play area and a large play­ground right in front of the restau­rant. What more could you want?!

Sprössling con­cept store

In the cool Sprössling con­cept store you’ll find sus­tain­able children’s cloth­ing, exquis­ite sec­ond-hand goods and trendy acces­sories. Par­ents can relax and shop while the kids are in good hands in the play area.

Swiss Youth Hostels: Home base during our city trip

Dur­ing our trip, we spend the night at Lucerne Youth Hos­tel, which is ide­al­ly locat­ed for a city trip and per­fect­ly con­nect­ed by pub­lic trans­port: All of these day-trip des­ti­na­tions can be eas­i­ly reached by bus in just a few min­utes. With its mod­ern fur­nish­ings, the youth hos­tel offers every­thing you need to imme­di­ate­ly feel at home.

As we were only trav­el­ling just the two of us this time, we opt­ed for one of the cosy dou­ble rooms with pri­vate show­er and WC. Of course, you will also find fam­i­ly rooms at this youth hos­tel that offer more space. Did you know that the break­fast buf­fet is always includ­ed in the room rate? The youth hos­tel also has a cosy recre­ation room with toys, games and table foot­ball.

Overall impression of our city trip to Lucerne

On our long week­end, we real­ly got to know Lucerne and, above all, its muse­ums. The Light Fes­ti­val is a huge plus – but we would come back on any oth­er week­end too. There’s so much to dis­cov­er and expe­ri­ence: in Lucerne itself and in the region. So it’s pret­ty much guar­an­teed we’ll be back.