Youth Hostel Locarno
In addition to the Youth Hostel, the unique 'Palace of Youth' also houses Ticino’s local radio station, a youth bureau, the music school and a press agency for young people. There’s always something going on in this stately old house, once a boarding school for young ladies ...
Locarno is the capital of the Locarno district, located on the northern tip of Lake Maggiore (Lago Maggiore) in the Swiss canton of Ticino, close to Ascona. It has a population of about 15,000. An important film festival, the Festival Internazionale del Cinema di Locarno, takes place every year in August in the Piazza Grande. In January 2004, the Italian historian Marino Vigano speculated that Locarno's castle may have been designed by
Leonardo da
Vinci.
The Astrovia Locarno is a 1 : 1,000,000,000 scale model of the Solar System. The Sun can be found at the end of Via Gioacchino Respini where the cyclepath, which runs alongside the river, starts. Pluto, the final planet in the model, can be found 6 km away from this starting point in the village of Tegna.The sanctuary of Madonna del Sasso in Orselina above the city is the principal sight and goal of pilgrimage in the city. Castello Visconteo on the edge of the old town was built in the 12th century, probably as the residence of a Captain Orelli, who remained true to the Emperor. In 1260, it fell into the hands of the Ghibellines. In, 1342, the Visconti of Milan, for whom it is now named, attacked the castle from both the land and the lake side and took it. It first came into the hands of the Eidgenossen in 1503. Today, only a fifth of the original structure remains. Most of that dates from the 15th and 16th centuries. Only the foundation remains from the original structure.
