Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume is to unveil a memorial in the Swiss Alps dedicated to Ireland's last Gaelic chieftains, it was revealed today.
A ceremony will also mark the momentous Flight of the Earls through the small town of Andermatt exactly four centuries ago this St Patrick's Day.
Irish Ambassador to Switzerland James Sharkey said weeks of celebrations will lead up to the inauguration of the memorial."This will be one of the great highlights of St Patrick's Day celebrations in Europe this year," he said.The last Gaelic earls fled English rule on a small ship from Co Donegal in 1607 in a defining moment that would forever alter the course of Irish history.On their way towards Spain - where they intended to gather an army to reclaim Ulster - they passed through Switzerland.On their epic journey over the Alps, the chieftains lost a fortune of gold down a ravine by the infamous Devil's Bridge, near Andermatt, on St Patrick's Day in 1608.It has never been recovered and is known as the Lost Treasure of the St Gotthard Pass.The new memorial to the earls will be inaugurated outside the old Church in Andermatt which, coincidentally, is dedicated to the Irish Saint Columbanus."Andermatt is a small town in the Alps - about the size of Buncrana or Carndonagh in Co Donegal - and they already have two monuments there," said Ambassador Sharkey."One is to the Russians who reached the Alps in 1814 and the other is to the French who resisted them during the Napoleonic Wars."Now, there will be a third monument to the Irish who reached the Alps 200 years earlier."Celebrations marking relations between Ireland and Switzerland will start on February 27 with an exhibition about the Flight of the Earls in the Swiss frontier city of Basel.Events will also be held in Berne, Zurich, Geneva and Lugano.