Five Days In Ticino: Locarno / Ascona / Monte Verita / Ronco

August 2024. Five days in Camping Delta Locarno where I visited the Locarno Film Festival and also walked from Ascona to Ronco via Monte Verita.

• Camping Delta Locarno

• The Locarno Film Festival 2024

I’d heard about the Locarno Film Festival for almost as long as I’d heard about The Montreux Jazz Festival, but unlike the jazz festival which I first visited in 1981, this year was my very first visit to the Locarno Film Festival.

I managed to get a ticket for the third last night to see a film I had never heard of and, most probably, will never hear of again. But it wasn’t the film itself I was interested in. It was the atmosphere of the festival and sitting on the Piazza Grande with thousands of other people enjoying the evening. It was a great experience which I think I may repeat again in the future.

• Looking down over Ascona from the path leading up to Monte Verita - The Mountain of Truth. I first visited Monte Verità over 40 years ago and my interest in the commune which was founded there in 1902 has never waned. Founded by a group of "Lebensreformers" who sought an alternative lifestyle free from the norms and constraints of the burgeoning industrial and capitalist society, the commune attracted a vast array of political, literary and artistic characters such as Otto Gross, Eric Mühsam, Hermann Hesse, D.H. Lawrence, Isadora Duncan, Marianne von Werefkin, to name just a few. But on this trip I didn't climb the path and steps from Ascona to visit Monte Verità but rather to walk along the Via Gottardo Madonna from Monte Monescia to Ronco.

  
  

• Looking towards Ronco, Brisago and the Brisago Islands

• Looking towards Ascona from Ronco.

  
  

  After having a rest in Ronco I walked down to the Port of Ronco to catch the bus back to Ascona. Feeling pretty exhausted from my long walk along the mountain side I thought a pizza & beer for lunch would be the perfect way to recover. After lunch a caught the boat back to Locarno.

  
  

• Piazza Guiseppe Motta, Ascona