Handpicked experience
Instant Confirmation
The Black Madonna was not carved dark — candle soot blackened her, an 1799 cleaning revealed her original pale colour, and the outcry was such that she was repainted black.
An object whose appearance was decided by public feeling
A farming operation running continuously for a thousand years
A garden designed to be experienced without sight
A crossing point used since before written record
Cheese made in front of you rather than described
A nine-hour day from Zurich linking three things: a guided walk through the medieval town and castle quarter of Rapperswil, the Benedictine monastery at Einsiedeln with its Black Madonna, and a working dairy for a cheese-making demonstration, with a chocolate stop to finish.
The statue at Einsiedeln is one of the most visited pilgrimage images in Europe, and its colour has a history worth knowing.
It was not carved dark. Centuries of candle smoke and oil lamps in a confined chapel gradually blackened the wood and the paint. When the figure was restored in 1799, cleaning took it back to its original light colouring — and pilgrims who had known it only as black objected so strongly that it was painted dark again.
So the Black Madonna is black because people expected her to be. The soot did the work, the restoration undid it, and public feeling put it back. Few objects illustrate so neatly how a tradition can outrank the thing it grew from.
Behind the church is one of the oldest stud farms still operating anywhere in Europe, founded within a few decades of the monastery itself.
Monasteries needed horses for transport, farm work and the business of a large estate, and Einsiedeln bred its own rather than buying them. The line has been maintained for close to a thousand years and the horses are still raised on the abbey's land — an unbroken agricultural operation, not a heritage display.
The town calls itself the town of roses and grows several thousand bushes across public gardens, including one laid out specifically for blind and partially sighted visitors, planted for scent and labelled in braille.
Look also at the long wooden footbridge running across the shallow upper end of the lake toward Hurden. The present structure dates from 2001, but it follows a crossing line used since prehistory — wooden piles found in the lakebed here show people were bridging this narrows thousands of years ago, and pilgrims walked it for centuries on the way to Einsiedeln.
The walk and the abbey are the same story, separated by a day's travel on foot.
Nine hours covers a good deal of ground and the stops are correspondingly brisk.
The abbey church is an active place of worship with services through the day; quiet is expected and parts may be closed. Rapperswil's old town is cobbled and rises toward the castle.
Meals are not included, and the chocolate stop is for tasting and buying rather than a factory visit.
Same route either way — the difference is who else is in the vehicle. Open one to see its dates and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
The chapel marks the cell of a hermit killed in the ninth century, and pilgrims have come here ever since.
A restoration cleaned the figure back to its original light colouring, revealing what she had looked like before the soot.
The present statue is late medieval, replacing earlier ones lost when the abbey burned more than once.
It dates from 1064, within a few decades of the monastery itself, and is among the oldest still operating in Europe.
A distinct local line kept by the abbey, small and sturdy, bred for mountain work rather than for show.
The climate on that shore is mild, and the town adopted the flower as a civic emblem it has cultivated ever since.
The present structure is from 2001, but the crossing line has been used since prehistory, with wooden piles found in the lakebed.
Yes. It produces for sale rather than for demonstration, and visitors watch a normal day's process.