Bellinzona

Bellinzona guards the point where the roads from the Gotthard, Lukmanier and San Bernardino passes come together, and it has been occupied since the early Neolithic. A Roman fort was built on the rock of Castelgrande in the late 1st century BC and rebuilt and enlarged in the 4th century. Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards all held it in turn, and in the Middle Ages emperors, the bishops of Como and the city of Milan fought over it; Castelgrande was besieged in 1284, 1292 and 1303.

Milan took the town in 1340 after a long siege, and under the Visconti and then the Sforza it flourished on the trade over the Gotthard. In the second half of the 14th century the Murata wall was built right across the valley, and the Rusca family's castle of Montebello, which they kept after the siege, stood within them. The Swiss of Uri pressed south: Milan routed them at Arbedo in 1422, but after a small Swiss force defeated a far larger Milanese army at Giornico in 1478, Milan built Sasso Corbaro and strengthened the other castles and the wall. Much of what stands today dates from that late 15th-century work.

When the French seized Milan in 1499 the citizens drove out their garrison, and on 14 April 1500 Bellinzona joined the Swiss Confederation as a subject town of Uri, Schwyz and Nidwalden. It became part of the canton of Ticino in 1803, shared the role of capital with Lugano and Locarno until 1878, and has been the sole capital since. Railway workshops opened in 1874, the castles were listed by UNESCO in 2000, and in 2017 twelve neighbouring municipalities merged into the city.

The castles shape Bellinzona's identity. Castelgrande, Montebello and Sasso Corbaro, with the walls and ramparts of the old market town, form a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Castelgrande was restored in a project completed in 1992 by the architect Aurelio Galfetti, with a lift cut through the rock and a spiral ramp from the Piazza Mario della Valle. Montebello holds a civic and archaeological museum, and Castelgrande a historical museum.

Carnival is the city's great festival. Rabadan, held for over 150 years, is the largest carnival in Italian-speaking Switzerland and one of the most important in the country. On the Thursday before Lent the mayor hands the keys of the city to King Rabadan, and for six days, until Shrove Tuesday, the streets of the centre are given over to festivities.

The town is largely Catholic and Italian-speaking, with German and Serbo-Croatian the next most common languages at the 2000 census. The Collegiata of Saints Peter and Stephen, the largest church in the area, keeps an organ of 1588 by Graziadio Antegnati of Brescia, the second oldest in Switzerland. The neoclassical Teatro Sociale and the art gallery in the Villa dei Cedri carry the town's cultural life.

Bellinzona had about 43,000 residents at the end of 2020. Before the 2017 merger the city had about 18,000; joining with Giubiasco, Sementina, Monte Carasso, Claro and eight other municipalities made it much larger in both people and area, and the old city of Bellinzona is now one district among many. In 2008 nearly 30 per cent of residents were foreign nationals.

As cantonal capital, Bellinzona is the seat of the cantonal government, the cantonal parliament and many cantonal offices. Its industrial symbol was the Officine, the railway workshops for wagons and locomotives, opened in 1874, and the railway remains central to the town. The new station of 2016, built as part of the AlpTransit project, made Bellinzona the first stop south of the Alps for long-distance trains from the north.

Life moves between the old town and its squares and the residential districts that spread across the valley floor. Many people commute in: in 2000 more than 16,000 workers travelled into the municipality for work.

Bellinzona eats the food of Ticino. Polenta and risotto are the popular dishes, often served with luganighe and luganighetta, artisan sausages. For centuries polenta was regarded as a meal for the poor: maize reached the south of Ticino at the start of the 17th century, but it was another 200 years before polenta, first of mixed flour and later of pure cornmeal, became the staple dish of the area.

Chestnuts are a historical staple food of southern Switzerland, and the chestnut tree, introduced around 2,000 years ago, was called the bread tree. Bruscitti, finely chopped beef cooked for a long time, are a Lombard dish popular in southern Ticino, served with polenta, risotto alla milanese or purée.

The grotto is the place to find these dishes: a rustic eatery, often an old wine cave turned into a restaurant, popular with locals and visitors in the hot summer months. Merlot is the leading red grape of Italian-speaking Switzerland. In town, restaurants and pizzerias around the old centre serve Italian cooking, and Castelgrande has a restaurant and wine cellar in its grounds.