Ticino: Verzasca, Maggia and the castles of Bellinzona

Two lakes and two valleys

In Ticino, the mountain valleys begin a few kilometres from the lakes. The trip starts in Lugano, climbs Monte Brè for the view, then goes through Gandria and Morcote, on the shore of Lake Lugano. To the west, Locarno and Ascona sit on Lake Maggiore.

The road up the Verzasca valley runs past a 220-metre-high dam, famous for the bungee jump in the film GoldenEye. It then follows a very clear river, which flows over smooth slabs of gneiss, as far as Sonogno, at the head of the valley. At Lavertezzo, the Ponte dei Salti crosses the river in two arches. Swimming there is dangerous: the water is cold, the current strong, and the level rises fast after a storm.

The Maggia valley begins at the Ponte Brolla gorge. At Bignasco, two roads split off: one climbs towards Mogno, the other enters Val Bavona. This valley is not connected to the power grid, except for the hamlet of San Carlo. Its stone hamlets huddle at the foot of huge rocks.

In 1500, the townspeople drove out the French troops and placed themselves under the protection of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden. For nearly three centuries, Ticino was ruled by the Swiss Confederates. It became a Swiss canton in 1803. Today it is the only one where Italian is the sole official language.

Castelgrande was restored in the 1980s by the architect Aurelio Galfetti. A lift cut into the rock takes you up from the lower town.

Locarno, Ascona and Monte Verità

Above Locarno, the sanctuary of the Madonna del Sasso is built on a rock. According to tradition, a Franciscan friar saw the Virgin there in 1480. You walk up by a Way of the Cross or take the funicular. Down below, the Piazza Grande hosts the Locarno Film Festival every August. Founded in 1946, it has 8,000 open-air seats.

In Ascona, in 1900, a small group led by Henri Oedenkoven and Ida Hofmann settled on a hill above the town. They named it Monte Verità, the ‘mountain of truth’. Life there was vegetarian, and nudism was practised. Hermann Hesse and Carl Gustav Jung both spent time there. A museum now tells the story. From Ascona, a boat takes a quarter of an hour to reach the Brissago Islands and their botanical garden.

What not to miss

1. 1Monte BrèAt 925 metres, said to be one of the sunniest summits in Switzerland; a funicular has run up it since 1912.
2. 2GandriaA car-free village above the lake; across the water, the Swiss Customs Museum tells the story of smuggling.
3. 3MorcoteArcades by the water and a long flight of steps up to the church of Santa Maria del Sasso.
4. 4CorippoLong the smallest municipality in Switzerland; several of its empty houses now form a hotel spread through the village.
5. 5The church at MognoDestroyed by an avalanche in 1986, the church was rebuilt by Mario Botta in white marble and grey gneiss.
6. 6The Foroglio waterfallIt drops about 110 metres, just behind the stone houses of the hamlet.

Ticino in pictures

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The Foroglio waterfall, in Val Bavona.

The Ticino table

In Ticino, you eat at a grotto. Grotti were originally cool cellars set against the rock, where wine and cheese were kept. Many have become small restaurants, with granite tables under the chestnut trees. They serve polenta, risotto, cured meats and formaggini, small fresh cheeses.

The canton’s red wine is Merlot, chosen in 1906 after phylloxera had destroyed most of the vines. It is drunk from a boccalino, a small ceramic jug. In autumn, the chestnut is everywhere: as flour, in cakes or roasted.