Europe's sunniest Swiss town — camellias, lake cruises, and the world's most beautiful film festival
Locarno sits at the northern end of Lake Maggiore in Ticino, the Italian-speaking canton of Switzerland, where palms and camellias grow year-round and the arcaded old town piazza hosts one of the world's most atmospheric open-air film festivals each August — 8,000 seats under the stars on Piazza Grande. The Madonna del Sasso sanctuary clings to a cliff above the town, and the Valle Verzasca with its turquoise river and 007 bungee jump is 15 minutes away. Locarno is also famous for the 1925 Treaties of Locarno, which briefly stabilised postwar Europe.
The Treaties of Locarno signed in 1925 represented a high point of 1920s European diplomacy — Germany accepted the western borders drawn by Versailles, and the signatories briefly believed they had secured permanent peace. Locarno itself belonged to the Visconti dukes of Milan before Swiss conquest in 1513, and the piazza arcades still carry that Lombard character. The International Film Festival began in 1946 and today it is one of the world's five major festivals alongside Cannes, Venice, Berlin, and Toronto.