The latter is famous for its dam, featured
in the opening, 220-metre bungee-jumping stunt of the 1995 Lames Bond film
GoldenEye, which anyone can now repeat (apart from the hit at the end where
Pierce Brosnan shoots a piton into the rock to stop himself springing back up)
thanks to the commercial bungee-jumping operation set up there in the wake of
the film. But it’s the section of the Val Verzasca upstream of the dam and its
reservoir that offers the true landscape thrills. Here around Lavertezzo, the
river has scoured its way down through blocks of dazzling white limestone to
create a series of natural pools, separated by little cascades or rapids. What
really stops you in your tracks is the translucent green of the water, which
seems more Caribbean than Swiss. Bathers splash in the bracing stream and scuba
divers explore the three deep pools that the river has carved out, just a few
metres from haystacks and grazing cows.
Lavertezzo - Swiss
Lugano and Locarno live in symbiotic
harmony with the valleys and mountains that surround them. The classic Sunday
jaunt from Lugano is to take the little funicular to the summit of Monte Bre,
the mountain that dominates the city and the lake to the east. When it was
inaugurated in 1912, the funicular was designed according to one local
newspaper, “to give to Lugano a summer village where the inhabitants could,
without abandoning their businesses, enjoy the cool during the dog-days, the
delightful walks and the marvelous view”. A century on, its function is
unchanged: not abandoning their businesses but fitting Monte Bre in before or
after work, the inhabitants are still touchingly loyal to their own bit of
Alpine scenery and workout space.
Morning
mood over Lake Lugano
Locerno also has a funicular, which ferries
the faithful and the curious up to Madonna del Sasso, a hilltop shrine that
keeps the city and the church under its protective eye, and traditionally
(though not infallibly) stops the rain falling during the spectacular open-air
screenings during the Locarno Film Festival in August. But Locarno is also the
jumping-off point for some of Ticino’s most unspoilt valleys. To the north lie
pretty Valle Maggia and its more rugged offshoot. Vat Bavona; to the west are
the Centovalli (or “hundred valleys’), best experienced on one of the trains
that ply the little narrow-gauge railway between Locarno and Domodossola in
Italy, and wild, remote Valle Onsernone with its jagged landscapes,
other-worldly atmosphere and resident population of ageing Swiss-German flower
children.
Madonna
del Sasso
Perhaps it’s the cross-fertilisation of
town and mountain that explains Ticino’s easy sashay between the profane and
the sacred. Lugano’s most straight to the town’s (and perhaps Ticino’s) most
ravishing cultural and religious monument, the church of Santa Maria degli
Angioli with its early 16th-century frescoes by Bernardino Luini.
After the window dressing of Prada and Hermes comes a marvelous,
cast-of-thousands Crucifixion scene, painted by Luini as if observing the naïve
but genuine amateur dramatics of a village Passion play. Only Mary Magdalene
lacks a theatrical touch: kneeling with her back to us and arms outstretched,
she appears transfixed by wonder and devotion. Or maybe she’s just the best
actress of the lot.
the
church of Santa Maria degli Angioli with its early 16th-century
frescoes by Bernardino Luini
Up on the slopes of Monte Tamaro, accessed
by a vertiginous cable car that ascends more than a thousand metres from
Rivera, between Lugano and Bellinzona, kids whoop as they try out Switzerland’s
longest “flying-fox” ride, or career with dad down a snaking, switchback bob
ride that runs on metal tracks. Right next to this Alpine playground, however,
is that rarest of things: a modern church that manages to be genuinely moving.
Designed by Mario Botta, Ticino’s best-known architect, the chapel of Santa
Maria degli Angeli is dug into the hillside like one of those platforms from
which hang-gliders leap into the void. Inside, Enzo Cucchi’s monochrome murals
hit just the right note, poised between child-like wonder and ancient wisdom.
between
Lugano and Bellinzona, kids whoop as they try out Switzerland’s longest
“flying-fox” ride
