A curious place, Lugano. The canton of Ticino is a sliver of Italian in a predominantly German- and French-speaking nation-state, and it slivers right up against and into Italy itself.
Across Lake Lugano you can see the Italian town of Campione d’Italia. Then you see the hills of Switzerland that completely surround it – Campione d’Italia being an Italian exclave. And looking beyond those hills and woods you see the hills and woods of proper Italy that surround them.
And then there’s the weather. I mentioned the Mediterranean feel in my last post. But Lugano is roughly at the same latitude as Lyon in France. The difference is the Alps; it blocks all that cold northern rubbish so Lugano can literally bask in the sun.
And that’s the thing to do here. Bask in the sun, walk along the lake, ride up the mountains and enjoy the view, have a coffee in the piazzas, live la dolce vita!
Lugano has a number of lovely Romanesque churches hidden amongst the piazzas, and the church of Santa Maria degli Angioli is known for its fresco of the Crucifixion. Note the stairway. The town itself appears to be built on three levels, and it’s a steep walk – or funicular – up to the main train station.
Here’s another little gem, the church of San Antonio Abate in the Piazza Dante Alighieri. It was built between 1633 and 1676. By that time Lugano had been part of the Swiss Confederation for over a hundred years, having got tired of being constantly disputed over by the dukes of Como and Milan.
And that’s all there is to say about Lugano’s history, in terms of things that really grab the attention. A prosperous community that became Swiss, and got on with it. There was that little bother when Napoleon conquered the Confederation in 1798 and some Lugano residents rose up against it in 1799, proclaiming themselves to be “Free and Swiss”…
…then there are the four great Palazzi Rivas, of which this one, the Palazzo Riva-Ghioldi, is apparently the oldest…
…there’s the outside of the church of San Rocco…
…and the inside
…and it’s a rather nice town to wander around on a warm sunny day.
But it’s time to show you more of that incredible natural backdrop. Situated on a lake surrounded by verdant mountains on all sides, there are two hills that particularly dominate proceedings here. The peak of Mount Bre, seen here to the right, is allegedly the sunniest place in Switzerland.
The other one is Mt. San Salvatore. It’s the sugar-loaf mountain in the picture at the end of my last blog. Both offer funicular rides, and to end this post I’m going to indulge you with some photos I took when I took a ride to the top of San Salvatore yesterday.
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