All this time we’ve been thinking of Switzerland as a pretty, but rather sensible place. The land of fine watches, punctual trains, ski resorts and overly discreet bankers. A place Theresa May goes on holiday. An agreeable destination, but maybe just a tiny bit dull (unless you get turned on by high-end chocolate).
Now, thanks to a viral video revealing the wild riverine beauties of the Lavertezzo valley, the world is starting to cotton on to an unexpected fact: there is a corner of the country that is as ravishing in its beauty as it is alluring in its glamour, a place that is hedonistic, sensuous, even naughty (and also a little less pricey, now the Swiss franc has softened).
If you haven’t guessed — and to judge from the few British tourists who make it here, you probably haven’t — I’m talking about Ticino, the sunny Italian-speaking slice of southern Switzerland, protectively walled to the north by the high Alps and blessed with a Mediterranean climate. I find myself looking at the goldstone clock tower on a hilltop village, surrounded by rustling vines and olive groves, smiling contentedly in the sun as I sip another fine glass of white Swiss merlot. That’s right, white Swiss merlot.
My hostess, the charmingly garrulous Valentina, daughter of the prizewinning winemaker Claudio Tamborini, explains the viticultural history. Very quickly.
“We were making wines in Ticino in Roman times, but in 1906 it was decided the mild climate was perfect for merlot and now we make some of the best merlots in Europe, including some unique styles — but we make so little it isn’t exported. Also lovely honey, and our own olive oil, and cherries, and try the chestnuts. In the winter when Ticino was poor all they ate was chestnuts. I think they must have got bored of chestnuts. Now let’s taste the rosé.”
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It’s hard to resist. Once we have tried the rosé, and the white, and another red, then decided the rosé is nicest, or possibly the merlot (shall we try the white again?) we go for a quick tour — or a cheerful stagger — around the estate.
Valentina shows me the sweet B&B rooms that are rented out in winter and the sculptures distributed between the vines and olives, but it’s the views that are ravishing: across the Tresa Valley, with its murmuring oak and locust wood forests stretching to Alpine silence in the north (glaciers are only an hour’s drive away) and, in the other direction, the sultry promise of Italy.
Next stop, lunch. Valentina wants me to eat in a grotto. I have an image of sandwiches munched under stalagtites. It turns out, though, that a grotto is a kind of rustic Ticinese bistro, where you sit outdoors at granite tables and drink red Vallombroso wine with fiercely local dishes such as slow-cooked beef shank studded with leeks and lardons and taken with coarsely delicious Malcantone polenta. It is an expression, on a single plate, of the clashing cultures of Ticino: rural yet refined, Teutonic yet Italianate. Excellent, but expensive.
In the car the next day (the best way of getting around, but watch out for rush-hour traffic jams, especially near tunnels — yes I’m looking at you, San Gotthard) I make for affluent, well-fed Lugano, half an hour away. I’m spending a couple of nights in the tormentingly opulent new hotel The View.
The name is no misnomer: almost every space in the hotel, from the chic indoor pool to the perfect-for-prosecco terrace and the Michelin-aspiring restaurant, gazes in a kind of astonishment at the spectacular vista of the clustered mountains falling to the sparkling lake. At night the lights on the slopes turn the darkened world into a generously heaped bowl of golden stars. As they say in Switzerland: bella, bella.
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Downtown Lugano is polite, prosperous and pretty. Make sure you have an evening to amble around its lakeside waterfront: the Luganese like to stroll from bar to bar, chattering in giddy Swiss Italian, drinking their unexported wines to go with lovely tucker. A sense of easy wealth and orderly happiness pervades the unpolluted air. This, I suppose, is what comes from 300 years of continuous peace and productive capitalism.
From here there is much to explore. You could jump in the car and visit the green Ticinese valleys. You could try Val Verzasca or Val Maggia, which are great for hiking and that now-viral wild swimming (remember to download hikeTicino, the excellent hiking app). You could march up the remote, glacier-ended Val Rovana, a place fantastically devoid of electricity and home to locals who speak an Ur-German dialect no one else entirely understands.
Alternatively you could take the funicular from winsome Locarno, then a modernist cable car, then a wobbling chairlift, until you come to the dizzying grandeur of Cimetta, at 1,600m. From here you can see just about all of Ticino — from Switzerland’s lowest spot, the torpid delta of the Maggia River, to the highest, Dufourspitze, sparkling and snowy on the serene blue horizon. You can see various stations between, such as the world’s northernmost rice paddies and the Unesco-listed, 16th-century Bellinzona castles, denoting the marches where beer-and-butter north meets wine-and-oil south, a place worth a stop if you drive here from Zurich airport (a very beautiful three-hour journey via Lake Lucerne).
Standing on Cimetta, I’m more interested in much humbler prospects: a little suburban hill by the lakeside village of Ascona and two minuscule green islands in the blue expanse of Lake Maggiore. They don’t look much from up here, but these are the twin apples in Ticino’s peculiar Eden.
I’m going to visit them, but first I make the ten-minute walk from my hotel, along the flag-waving, regatta-minded gaiety of Ascona’s waterfront, to that slope of chestnuts, pines and drowsy summerhouses. In medieval times Monte Verita, the “mountain of truth”, was a wooden hamlet and already blessed with a spiritual reputation, from witchy Black Masses to Celtic shrines and rituals.
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In about 1900 this hilly lakeside woodland was discovered by countercultural Dutch and Germans, who set up a sequence of communes dedicated to the perfect life in this perfect spot.
Some were vegans. Some wore nothing but white. Some decided that they should consume liquid only via fruit. Some were very famous: Carl Jung came here, likewise Paul Klee, Isadora Duncan, Hermann Hesse, plus international anarchists, pioneering dancers and devotees of Free Love. As I hike with my guidebook I happen across a clearing in the trees: this, Casa Selma, is where the world’s first sunbathers scandalously stripped off to worship the sun.
Even today this strange, seductive little nook exerts a certain spell. As I sip a peppy macchiato in the Bauhaus-era Monte Verita hotel, overlooking Ascona and the lake, I’m overcome by an intense desire to stay. Why leave? This is perfection. One more coffee. Some chilled white merlot. But it is time now to explore those islands in the lake.
The ferry to the Brissago Islands from the pier at Ascona takes 20 minutes, yet it transports you to another world: literally, in meteorological terms. The rocky islands have a peculiar microclimate — fully 3C warmer than anywhere in the vicinity. These idyllic isles are subtropical, a remarkable fact exploited through the early 20th century by their rich and aristocratic owners, who imported fertile soil and built a magnificent garden of 1,700 species from across the world, along with a noble Palladian villa. Many came to marvel, from James Joyce to the Monte Verita hippies.
Walking the paths between the palms and cacti, the roses and camellias, the belladonna and the eucalypts, past dappled pools filled with hopping turtles where blue dragonflies hover and shimmer, I get a sense of Tahitian languor — and erotic decadence.
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Probably the prettiest corner of the bigger island is the “Roman” bath, ordained by its German industrial owner Max Emden in the 1930s. He spent his happiest times here with an infamous harem of women, beautiful actresses and giggling showgirls, who spent most of the long summers nude. Apparently they would all sleep together, inspired, perhaps by legends of the wildly promiscuous monks who once inhabited Brissago. At other times Emden would choose his bedmate for the night by hurling a golden coin into the waters of this same Roman bath, for the girls to dive and claim.
My time is nearly done. Ascona glimmers in the summer haze. A yacht passes slowly down Lake Maggiore towards Italy. And as I walk back to the pier, and the ferry, a big fat lotus flower nods, sleepily and dreamily, as if it is remembering the days when the bare-breasted actresses giggled beneath the palms, as they ran down to the sands and into the sun. In a very secret and unexpected corner of Switzerland.
Need to know
Sean Thomas was a guest of The View, Lugano, which has B&B doubles from SwFr785 (£615) a night (www.theviewlugano.com), and Hotel Eden Roc, Ascona (edenroc.ch/en), which has B&B doubles from SwFr350 a night.
How to get there
Switzerland Travel Centre (020 7420 4900, stc.co.uk) has flights to Zurich from £120 return. Rail transfer tickets cost from SwFr146 and are valid for a month.
Further information ticino.ch
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Summer trips in Switzerland
Hiking in the Bernese Oberland
Hotel Jungfrau is a three-star hotel with simple but comfortable rooms in the beautiful car-free village of Mürren in the Bernese Oberland (hoteljungfrau.ch). It’s a great base for walking and not far from the cable car to the top of Schilthorn (2,790m), with marvellous views across the Alps (for tickets see schilthorn.ch). Flights to Zurich cost from £120 return (swiss.com) and a return rail transfer to Mürren costs from £115pp (stc.co.uk).
Digital detox in the Engadine Valley
Three-day digital detox packages are on offer at the Grand Hotel Kronenhof in Pontresina this summer (kronenhof.com). You hand in phones and tablets at reception on arrival before checking into a room with no TVs, phones or other modern gadgets. The packages include a dawn walking tour, a detox bath, two massages, a Pilates lesson, paddleboarding, unlimited use of local trains and access to the hotel spa. The price is from £1,070pp half-board, excluding flights to Zurich.
Alpine sailing adventure
Mention St Moritz and most of us think of skiing, but sailing holidays are available during the summer. Stay at the five-star castle-like Suvretta House hotel and use it as a base to join a week-long sailing course offered by the St Moritz Sailing Club on Lake Sils. The courses cost from £950, or from £80 for an individual lesson. A half-board stay at Suvretta House, which has an excellent spa with a 25m pool, costs from £350 a night (suvrettahouse.ch). Fly to Zurich and take a train transfer.
Mountain hideaway in Beatenberg
Enjoy breathtaking views across mountains and lakes while staying at a wonderful two-bedroom chalet apartment sleeping four, which still has availability this summer. Novasol (novasol.co.uk) is offering a week’s stay from £665 (£166pp) at an apartment in Beatenberg in the Bernese Oberland; the holiday reference is ZBE019. It’s a great spot for hiking or cycling. Novasol has many other Swiss properties.
Verbier at 2,457m
Escape from the hustle and bustle of modern life while staying at Cabane du Mont Fort, perched on the slopes of Fort mountain at 2,457m by the ski resort of Verbier. It’s pretty basic, but there’s a good restaurant serving traditional Swiss dishes, and the 15 cabin rooms are cosy and comfortable (cabanemontfort.ch). There are many great nearby hiking trails to explore. The price is from £30pp in a private double room. For more information see verbier.ch. Fly to Geneva from about £100 return with Easyjet.
Walk from the Eiger to the Matterhorn
The walk between the Eiger and Matterhorn peaks is one of the most challenging and exciting in the Alps. Inntravel has put together a 14-night trip covering about 100 miles and crossing mountain passes rising to 3,000m before dipping into the Rhone Valley. It costs from £2,185pp staying at three and four-star hotels half-board, with rail transfers from Geneva airport, but not flights (01653 617000, inntravel.co.uk).
Rail trips in the mountains
Explore the glorious Alpine meadows, lakes and mountains of the Jungfrau region by train while staying at the remote mountain hotel Faulhorn, near Grindelwald (berghotel-faulhorn.ch) — it’s a 45-minute hike up to the hotel. Faulhorn has impressive views and is great for hiking, with shared rooms from £39pp. A three-day Jungfrau railway travel pass for local trains, which can be picked up in Interlaken for the journey to Grindelwald, costs from £140 (jungfrau.ch).
Trek around Mount Rosa
Participants walk between 10 and 15 miles a day on a rigorous trek around Mount Rosa, Switzerland’s highest peak, organised by KE Adventure (01768 773966, keadventure.com). Starting at Saas Fee, the escorted group sets off across rugged terrain, traversing glaciers and reaching 3,317m. The maximum group size is ten, with hotels and mountain refuges organised. It costs from £1,295pp.
Stay in a luxury tepee
The five-star Tschuggen Grand Hotel in Arosa has introduced stays in a luxury tepee within its grounds in new special packages (tschuggen.ch). The price for a six-night B&B break, including one night in the tepee, with dinner and breakfast included, costs from £804pp. Fly to Zurich and buy a Swiss transfer ticket to Arosa from £113 return (swisstravelsystem.co.uk).
Tom Chesshyre