Things to do
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Monte Verita
The hill above the town where a utopian colony settled from 1900, growing into a century of conferences on psychology and myth. The Bauhaus hotel of 1929, the Casa Anatta and the tea house survive as a museum in a park of camellias.
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Castello San Materno
A restored medieval castle at the top of the old town holding the town's collection of German and Swiss modernism, the painters who followed the Monte Verita circle here. It is small and it is the best single room of expressionism in Ticino.
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Isole di Brissago
Two islands in the lake off Porto Ronco, the larger laid out as a botanical garden from 1885 with subtropical planting that survives on the lake's own microclimate. The boat from Ascona takes about twenty minutes and the garden closes for the winter.
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Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna
Set in the Palazzo Pancaldi on Via Borgo, the town's modern art museum holds the world's largest collection of Marianne von Werefkin, who lived in Ascona until her death in 1938. Alongside her paintings hang works by the artists of Der Grosse Baer, the group she helped found here. An hour covers it comfortably.
