Grand Hotel National
Lucerne, Switzerland · 5-star Hotel Price swings 140%
Grand Hotel National in photographs
When to go
The cheapest month we have found is November, at around USD 331 a night - -40% against what this hotel usually asks.
Where to book
- Book on Booking.com - Free cancellation options, guest reviews and a familiar checkout.
- Book direct with the hotel - Usually the best price, and the only route where a loyalty discount applies.
- Hotel website - Photos, facilities and location.
Our notes
Grand Hotel National Luzern
The Grand Hotel National is a five-star Belle Epoque hotel on the shore of Lake Lucerne, fashionable since 1870 according to the hotel. It offers 62 rooms and suites, including three apartments, and shares the building with 25 private residences, two ballrooms and an elegant pool floor with sauna. It is owned by Raimondo P. Erculiani, and the hotel describes each room as individually designed, from classically elegant furnishings to modern design in the Design rooms.
Rooms range from Classic City or Lake View rooms of 21 to 25 m² to Junior Suites of 44 to 48 m² with a balcony over the lake and mountains, and the corner Ritz Suite of 70 to 73 m² with two balconies. There are also one- and two-bedroom design apartments with a kitchen.
The hotel has several restaurants and bars: Brasserie Juliette, the National Bar, Cafe Cesar, Ristorante Salvatore, the Chinese restaurant Jialu and the National Golden India. A weekly National Brunch runs from September to May. Photographs: the hotel's own website, grandhotel-national.com.
The area
Lucerne's postcard image is the Kapellbrücke, the covered wooden bridge across the Reuss first built around 1365 as part of the city's fortifications and still, structurally, one of the oldest of its kind in Europe - though "structurally" is doing some work there, since a fire in August 1993 tore through two-thirds of its interior, destroying most of the 158 painted panels lining its roof that told the story of the city's patron saints and history. It reopened within a year, rebuilt, with only a fraction of the original paintings salvageable; most of what hangs there now is careful reconstruction rather than the originals.
A short walk from the bridge, the Lion Monument takes the opposite tone entirely: a dying lion carved directly into a sandstone cliff face between 1820 and 1821, designed by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen and cut by the stonemason Lukas Ahorn, to commemorate the roughly 760 Swiss Guards killed defending the Tuileries Palace in Paris during the French Revolution in 1792. Mark Twain, on seeing it, called it the most mournful piece of stone in the world, and the setting - a quiet pool and sandstone grotto rather than a plaza - still makes the case for him. Above the old town, the two mountains locals actually use for a proper day out are Pilatus, reachable by the world's steepest cogwheel railway and wrapped in old dragon legends, and Rigi, the gentler "Queen of the Mountains" reached by two separate railways and a boat ride across the lake to get there.
What it costs through the year
| Cheapest we have seen | USD 304 ≈ €272 |
|---|---|
| What it usually costs | USD 548 ≈ €490 |
| Dearest we have seen | USD 1,070 ≈ €956 |
| Times we looked | 33 |
| Gap between the two | 140% |
| Last checked | 2026-10-29 |