Story
The story of Morcote
After the plague year of 1432, only seven families survived in this lakeside town. From around 1100 a castle stood here to guard and control trade on the lake, and until the dam at Melide was built in 1847, this was the largest port on Lake Lugano.
In 1422 the Duke of Milan granted the town the right to levy taxes, govern itself, fish freely and hold markets, and even after the region passed to the Swiss Confederation in 1517, Morcote kept fishing rights over the entire lake. Its name, first recorded in 926 as Murcau, comes from the Latin for "head of the hill".
Climb the monumental staircase to the church of Santa Maria del Sasso, rebuilt in 1462 in Renaissance style, where one fresco is dated 1513. Beside it, a terraced cemetery from 1750 overlooks the water; the composer Eugen d'Albert and the writer Georg Kaiser are buried there. And in 1862, seven houses slid into the lake.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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More highlights in Lugano
- SwissminiaturOpen-air miniature park opened in 1959 in Melide, showing models of buildings from all over Switzerland.
- Cathedral of Saint LawrenceLugano Cathedral is a Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to Saint Lawrence in Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland.
- Ciani ParkLugano's main historic park on the lake shore, the largest urban garden in Italian-speaking Switzerland.
- Monte BrèMonte Brè (925 m) is a small mountain east of Lugano on the flank of Monte Boglia (1,516 m) with a view of the bay of Lugano and the Pennine Alps and the Bernese Alps. It is considered one of the sunniest points in Switzerland.
- Monte San SalvatoreThe Monte San Salvatore (912 m) is a mountain in the Lepontine Alps above Lake Lugano and the city of Lugano in Switzerland. The Monte San Salvatore funicular links the city with the summit of the mountain.
- GandriaGandria is both a quarter of the city of Lugano in the Swiss canton of Ticino, and a village on the northern shore of Lake Lugano, which forms the core of that quarter.