In Lugano

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It seemed like a good idea to try Lugano next. It’s a bigger town with more museums than Ascona, there might be a chance we’d stumble upon something by Julius Bissier there.

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We had a good view of Lugano from the Balcony of Italy on top of Monte Sighignola.

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Then later down in the town we looked back and the mountain had a good view of us.

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We found the Museo d’Arte but it was August and closed for the month. Further down the street was Lugano Arte e Cultura, a brand new arts centre scheduled to open in 2013 but it was still unfinished.

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It’s the building in the background, behind this olive tree. In the foreground, in the shade of the tree, there’s a cool place for a lie down and around the corner there’s a tree that just can’t quite stand up.

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Nearby there’s a plaque for Franz Kafka to commemorate his holiday here, and just out of town there’s the Museo Hermann Hesse where you can see Hesse’s table and Hesse’s umbrella.

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Then too late, I realised we must have walked right past our best chance of an encounter with a Julius Bissier painting. Somehow we’d completely missed the Museo Cantonale d’Arte. Maybe it was closed.

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But instead we chanced upon the medieval church of Santa Maria degli Angioli, a plain building on the outside but decorated inside with a monumental fresco of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, painted in 1529 by Bernadino Luini. The sun shines down and the angels watch over Santa Maria.

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On the waterfront a line dangled from a tree, a fish out of water hanging like a caterpillar on a thread.

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On our way back, on the outskirts of Lugano, we passed through Castagnola where Ben and Winifred Nicholson painted in the 1920s. Ninety years later and it’s a prime site for redevelopment.

Frames of reference

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