Dux, Schaan's pilgrimage chapel and its tower above the Rhine

If I had to show someone the Rhine valley without a car or a chairlift, I’d take them up to Dux. It’s a hillside quarter of Schaan with a pilgrimage chapel, a park full of sculptures and a tower that looks out over the valley. It doesn’t feature on the country’s greatest hits, and to me that’s part of the appeal.

A country chapel with a national story

The chapel’s official name is Maria zum Trost, Our Lady of Consolation, and it stands at 525 m. According to the Historisches Lexikon it was built around 1716 on the site of a smaller chapel and consecrated in 1743. The tower came in 1789 and the west porch in 1829. The tourist board gives 1716 as the date and notes that it has been listed since 1951.

From outside it’s plain, an east-facing nave under a half-hipped roof. The good stuff is inside. The high altar holds a dressed figure of the Virgin and Child from around 1740, the side altars show St Mary Magdalene and St George fighting the dragon, and the nave has a coffered ceiling with Régence ornament. The gallery has rosary paintings by Josef Walser, dated 1746.

What the votive panels tell you

The panels are what I like most about Dux. The Lexikon says the many votive offerings point to a lively pilgrimage, and one of them is special. On the south wall hangs a copy of a painting of an Austrian regiment, the Breis, camped at Dux in 1796, at the height of the wars against revolutionary France. The original is in the LandesMuseum in Vaduz.

The chapel has a 20th-century chapter too. On 25 March 1940, with Europe at war, Prince Franz Josef II consecrated the country and his family to Our Lady of Dux. The chapel was renamed Our Lady of Liechtenstein, a name that never stuck. And on 8 August 1985 John Paul II visited during his stay in the country, as a plaque over the door and a bronze memorial to the north record. To see how it compares, I’ve gathered them all in my round-up of churches and chapels in Liechtenstein.

What do you see from the Dux tower?

Don’t get the two towers mixed up. The chapel has its own belfry, but the lookout is a separate structure close by, the Turm auf Dux. The tourist board says it gives you the Rhine valley and the wild landscape below the Three Sisters massif. It’s nowhere near the highest viewpoint in the country, but I find it the most rewarding for the effort, because you walk up from a town centre and it doesn’t depend on a lift or on snow.

If you’re after bigger views, from Gaflei or Sareis, I compare them in my list of viewpoints in Liechtenstein. Dux is the one I’d do on day one, to get my bearings.

A park with fourteen stations

In 1943 the grounds were reshaped into parkland with fourteen Stations of the Cross sculptures by Gottfried Hilti. Next door is the Dux leisure area which, according to the Lexikon, has a children’s playground, a Vita-Parcours fitness trail, a woodchip running track and a Kneipp water-treading pool. Schaan council also signposts a trail called Fuchs auf Dux.

That makes Dux a good family outing. Adults get a chapel and a view, children get swings, and nobody needs a ticket. It’s also a sensible warm-up if you’re planning a proper hike later in the trip, because you’ll see from here how steeply the Three Sisters rise behind Schaan and Planken. There are more ideas like this in my guide to Liechtenstein with kids.

The walk up and what else is nearby

The chapel is station 9 on Schaan’s Kulturweg, the loop of about six kilometres that the council reckons takes an hour. I’d start at the bottom at Schaan’s Roman fort, climb to Dux and come back through the upper village. Anyone crossing Liechtenstein on foot meets the tower too, because stage 3 of the Liechtenstein Trail climbs to it before heading on towards Planken. I couldn’t find chapel opening hours on any official website, so I’d go in daylight and not bank on getting in at a set time.