Ascona

thumb|300px|Ascona

Ascona ( ) is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

It is on the shore of Lake Maggiore.

The town is a popular tourist destination and holds the yearly Ascona Jazz Festival.

History

Prehistory

The oldest archaeological finds in Ascona (at S. Materno and S. Michele) go back to the beginnings of the Late Bronze Age. During the expansion of the cemetery in 1952, a necropolis was discovered at S. Materno, where 21 cremation urns were discovered. The urns were either simply buried or covered with a stone slab box. They contained cremated bones and, in some cases, bronze grave goods. Of particular interest are the bronze brooches, which are among the oldest that have been found so far in Switzerland. They also provide important evidence for the relationship of this area to the cultures of the Italian Peninsula. The grave goods have similarities with those from the final phase of the so-called Canegrate culture (named after a large necropolis in Milan). However, the materials used are those of the late Bronze Age north of the Alps. This allowed the cemetery to be dated to the period between the 12th and 10th centuries BC and points to the fact that Ascona took part in trade over the Alps through the Val Mesolcina and over Lake Maggiore with the Po Valley.

Similar objects were found by exploratory excavations in the late 1960s on the castle hill of San Michele. Both fine ceramics and coarse pottery were discovered, which suggests that this area was settled during the Late Bronze Age, even if there is no evidence of the municipal structures. Remains of walls and clay from the Balladrum hill are the only Iron Age objects found in the municipality. However, the exact age is unknown. The only item that has been conclusively identified is a single flagon from the 6th to 5th century BC. The etymology of the toponym is unknown, there are several suggestions from 19th-century scholarship, all of them uncertain:

from Latin scanum "alluvial sediment", from Latin ab abscondito, or from an uncertain early Romance asculà "pasture in uncultivated land". The German form of the name, Aschgunen, is recorded from the 16th century, when Locarno had come under the rule of the Old Swiss Confederacy. It is no longer in use.

In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Duni enlarged their fortress (demolished in the 17th century) and the church of S. Sebastiano as well as having created a plaza around their residential home. The oldest fortification, probably, is the castle of San Materno. At its location, north of the village, there already seems to have been a Roman tower. The fort was occupied as early as the Early Middle Ages. In the 13th century, it was owned by the Orelli and Castelletto families. In the 17th century, only a part of the walls was still preserved. In the course of the 13th century, two new fortifications were built. The first was the Carcani Castle on the shore east of the Church of SS. Pietro e Paolo, and it was already demolished by the 2nd half of the 13th century. The second, was still further east, outside the inhabited area at that time. The Griglioni built a small castle to protect a port. Parts of this castle still exist and have been integrated into modern buildings.

Monte Verità

thumb|Villa Semiramis on Monte Verità, today a part of the hotel and conference complex

"Monte Verità" ("Mount Truth") was so named at the beginning of the 20th century, when a "colony" was founded by proponents of primitive socialism and anarchy on a hill formerly known as "Monescia", just to the north-west of the town of Ascona.

The colony attracted a large number of artists, anarchists, and other famous people, including Hermann Hesse, Hans Habe, Carl Jung, Erich Maria Remarque, Hugo Ball, Else Lasker-Schüler, Stefan George, Isadora Duncan, Paul Klee, Rudolf Steiner, Mary Wigman, Gyula Háy, Max Picard, Ernst Toller, Henri van de Velde, Rudolf Laban, Frieda and Else von Richthofen, Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach, and Gustav Stresemann.

Geography

thumb|none|620px|Ascona with islands of Brissago

thumb|Lake Maggiore with Ascona in the foreground

thumb|Aerial view from 100 m by [[Walter Mittelholzer (1929)]]

Ascona has an area, , of . Of this area, or 35.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 33.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 52.9% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 4.0% is unproductive land.

Of the built up area, housing, and buildings made up 26.8% and transportation infrastructure made up 13.7%, while parks, green belts, and sports fields made up 10.9%. Out of the forested land, 28.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 5.0% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 6.0% is used for growing crops, while 3.0% is used for orchards or vine crops, and 26.8% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes. Of the unproductive areas, 3.8% is unproductive vegetation.

The municipality is in the Locarno District, on the right bank of the Maggia delta. It consists of the town of Ascona which includes the sections of Gerbi, Monescie, Monte Verità, Moscia, and Saleggi.

Coat of arms

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure two keys argent in saltire ribboned together and in chief a papal crown of the same. The attributes of St. Peter were conceded when the bishop of Como and the church of St. Peter (S. Pietro) gave feudal rights to Ascona."

Demographics

Ascona has a population () of . , 27.6% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 10.7%.

Most of the population () speaks Italian (66.0%), with German being the second most common (23.9%), and Serbo-Croatian being third (2.5%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 1,189 speak German, 112 people speak French, 3,289 people speak Italian, and 10 people speak Romansh. The remainder (384 people) speak another language.

, the gender distribution of the population was 46.6% male and 53.4% female. The population was made up of 1,776 Swiss men (32.4% of the population), and 779 (14.2%) non-Swiss men. There were 2,202 Swiss women (40.1%), and 731 (13.3%) non-Swiss women.

thumb|Ascona from a balcony

, there were 2,472 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.0 persons per household.

The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 0.65%. there were 4,636 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was the 3 room apartment of which there were 1,567. There were 606 single room apartments and 503 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 2,465 apartments (53.2% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 2,067 apartments (44.6%) were seasonally occupied and 104 apartments (2.2%) were empty.

{| class="wikitable"

! year

! population

| 1591

| ca. 1,000

| 1801

| 772

| 1850

| 902

| 1900

| 942

| 1920

| 1,118

| 1950

| 2,923

| 1980

| 4,722

| 1990

| 4,540

| 2000

| 4,984

| 2017

| 5,534

Heritage sites of national significance

There are eleven Swiss heritage site of national significance in Ascona. There are three churches on the list: the church of S. Maria della Misericordia with the Collegio Papio, the Church of S. Michele with the ruins of a medieval castle, and the Parish Church of SS. Pietro e Paolo. Three houses are on the list: the Serodine House, the Unifamiliare Tuia House, and the Villa at via Ludwig 26. The Balladrum, a prehistoric and medieval settlement, as well as the Albergo, a park with a complex of houses, and the Monte Verità Museum, are also on the list. Two museums, the Museo comunale d’arte and the Museo Epper, and a theater, the Teatro S. Materno, finish out the list. The entire town of Ascona is listed on the Inventory of Swiss Heritage Sites.

File:Tessin 05 2006 226.jpg|Church of S. Maria

File:Kirche-in-ascona.jpg|Parish Church of Ss. Pietro e Paolo

File:Hotel monte verità.jpg|Hotel on Monte Verità

</gallery>

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the FDP which received 32.24% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP (18.93%), the SVP (15.89%) and the SP (15.29%). In the federal election, a total of 1,419 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 41.4%.

In the Gran Consiglio election, there were a total of 3,346 registered voters in Ascona, of which 1,763 or 52.7% voted. 37 blank ballots and 2 null ballots were cast, leaving 1,724 valid ballots in the election. The most popular party was the PLRT, which received 422 or 24.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were; the PPD+GenGiova (with 323 or 18.7%), the SSI (with 307 or 17.8%) and the PS (with 215 or 12.5%).

In the Consiglio di Stato election, 29 blank ballots and 8 null ballots were cast, leaving 1,726 valid ballots in the election. The most popular party was the PLRT which received 409 or 23.7% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were; the PPD (with 338 or 19.6%), the LEGA (with 311 or 18.0%) and the SSI (with 254 or 14.7%). Of the working population, 7.5% used public transportation to get to work, and 47.8% used a private car.

Religion

thumb|Church in Ascona

From the , 3,308 or 66.4% were Roman Catholic, while 835 or 16.8% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. There are 606 individuals (or about 12.16% of the population) who belong to another church (not listed on the census), and 235 individuals (or about 4.72% of the population) did not answer the question. There were 26 vocational students who were attending school full-time and 73 who attend part-time.

The professional program lasts three years and prepares a student for a job in engineering, nursing, computer science, business, tourism and similar fields. There were 9 students in the professional program.

, there were 231 students in Ascona who came from another municipality, while 213 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

Notable people

155px|thumb|Dimitri, 2016

Dimitri (1935 in Ascona – 2016), a Swiss clown and mime artist
Daniela Ambrosoli (born 1941 in Ascona), a Swiss entrepreneur, philanthropist, and film director
Bruno Bisang (born 1952 in Ascona), a Swiss fashion photographer
Paolo Duca (born 1981 in Ascona), a Swiss former professional ice hockey player
Brigitte Helm (1906 – 1996 in Ascona), German actress who fled Nazi Germany for Switzerland and died in Ascona
Gaetano Matteo Pisoni (1713 in Ascona – 1782), an Italian architect, worked in a Late Baroque manner
Marianne von Werefkin (1860 – 1938 in Ascona), a Russian-German-Swiss Expressionist painter, lived in Ascona from 1918
Anthony van Hoboken (1887–1983), a musical collector, bibliographer, and musicologist; lived in Ascona 1951 to 1977
Wladimir Vogel (1896–1984), a Swiss composer of German and Russian extraction, lived in Ascona 1939-1964
Gregor Wentzel (1898–1978 in Ascona), a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics, lived in Ascona from 1970