The steep incline of the Gütschbahn funicular railway cuts a dramatic diagonal across this early photographic card of Lucerne, the lower station house with its half-timbered charm anchoring the foreground while a cable car creeps upward through the woods toward the fairy-tale silhouette of the Gütsch hotel-castle perched against the sky — a scene that must have thrilled arriving visitors named Anna or Friedrich stepping off the boat on Lake Lucerne below. The Gütschbahn, opened in 1884, was one of Switzerland's earliest funiculars and carried tourists to the panoramic Château Gütsch, a hotel built to look like a medieval castle. The card is a fine photographic halftone by Verlag Gebr. Wehrli, Phot. Kilchberg b. Zürich — the Wehrli brothers' firm being among the most respected Swiss photographic postcard publishers of the 1890s–1910s — and the back carries the Swiss UPU trilingual "Carte Postale" format with a dedicated stamp box.