Lucerne is the Swiss city that doesn’t want to pack away the Christmas lights, the city that can’t face the long dark nights of January. Of course, it’s bad luck to leave the decorations up beyond Twelfth Night, so the people of Lucerne came up with an ingenious solution. “Let there be light,” they decreed. So, in January 2019, for the first Lucerne Light Festival, they unwrapped a whole sack-load of exciting new illuminations.

Leaving the railway station, the tall and brightly illuminated letters LILU, the abbreviation for Lichtfestival Luzern, leave no-one in doubt that Lucerne welcomes the light festival. Last year’s 18 installations, lit from 6 pm to 10 pm, brought people out into the cobbled streets of the Old Town. Reflections softly shimmered across Lake Lucerne.

Few people ever expected that they would be buying tickets for a Genesis sequel, but Genesis 2 is the headliner for this year’s LILU. Undoubtedly, Genesis an eight projector 20,000 lumen artistic representation of the Creation, displayed on the columns and vaulted ceiling of the Hofkirche, one of Lucerne’s finest churches, was the star of the inaugural festival and the only installation requiring paid admission.

The original Genesis production a mesmerising 30 minute light show, to a stirring symphonic soundtrack from Hayden and Mahler, focused on the first three days of the creation; dividing the show into parts of light, water, soil and plants.

At times it was like being centre stage for The Big Bang, like being swept along in a tsunami, like watching rain-forest creepers on fast-forward with flowers blooming in just seconds. It was an experience with both hallucinogenic and psychedelic elements, almost spiritual for some, whilst leaving others in tears.

Immediately, the Geneva art collective Projektil, who had created Genesis, were booked for this year’s second festival. The organisers are optimistic that LILU 2020, running from 9th – 20th January, will feature over 20 installations.

Visitors to LILU 2020 will feel that they are watching a rapidly developing art form. Technology is giving artists new creativity and licence. Flurozoa was a light installation that floated blue jelly-fish like lights on Lake Lucerne with the gentle waves acted as dimmers on each of the bulbs. As the waves ebbed and flowed their motion created an impression of living life forms.

Yet with Aben, a series of gates, looking like airport security scanning scanners, it is the human beings who input the motion and creativity – but people must work together to produce the most spectacular displays when all the gates are lit simultaneously.

Equally, Shake It – designed by Francois Chalet, who teaches animation at Lucerne‘s University – is shaped by human input. People shake a snow dome to influence the delirious Bauhaus-meets-Tintin cartoon action depicted on a screen. Surely, ground-breaking artists of the past such as de Vinci, Turner and Picasso would have taken the opportunity to experiment with such a flexible new artistic medium?

Inevitably art is social comment. Andy Warhol spoke of everyone having 15 minutes of fame but with Juladi, where a camera projects multiple refracted images of the subject onto the entirety of town hall, the time has been downgraded to just 15 seconds. It’s the ultimate outsize egotistical selfie, with thought-provoking Big Brother overtones.

And of course, art is heritage, history and our DNA. In the heart of the timbered Old Town, the Novis installation, celebrates the birth of Lucerne. Legend has it that an angel shone a light on a spot, directing the lake’s fishermen to build a church there. Subsequently, Lucerne derived its name from the Latin for light.

Lucerne’s most famous landmark, the Lion Monument, took on a new meaning. Originally, the lion was installed to mark the death of 800 Swiss Mercenaries during the French Revolution, but the 2019 light piece Atoll posed intriguing questions. Amongst the light show, creating brightly coloured sea-creatures rising up from a pool, sit a deckchair and sun umbrella. Fossils show that Lucerne once had palm trees fringing a warm sea. Will global-warming return tropical seas to Switzerland?

Potential visitors to Lucerne need not worry about how to occupy their days before the lights are switched on. Lucerne hosts the Swiss Museum of Transport, The Rosengart Collection with a priceless collection of modern artists and the Kunstmuseum whose art collection dates back to the Renaissance.

A gourmet lunch cruise on the star-shaped Lake Lucerne inevitably tempts visitors to take the cable car to the 7,000 feet peak of Mount Pilatus. If you have a night to spare you can stay at the hotel close to the summit for breath-taking sunset and sunrise views down the mountain and across the lake.

January has always been a good time to visit Lucerne, the picturesque wooden bridges crossing the lake are less crowded, fewer people are shopping amongst the cobbles of the Old Town and there are good value hotel rates to be bagged. But the Lucerne Light Festival, an exciting new art form, has made Lucerne one of January’s must visit destinations.

Photos courtesy of Elmar Bossard