A border canton as refuge, 1791–1847

The first exiles

Italian political refugees reached the territory of today's Ticino before the canton existed. The Piedmontese Giovan Antonio Ranza, a Jacobin publicist wanted by the Sardinian police, arrived in Lugano in 1791, when the town was still a common bailiwick of the twelve Confederate cantons.¹ After 1815 the stream became regular. Ugo Foscolo, who had left Milan secretly so as not to swear allegiance to Austria, touched Lugano on 1 April 1815 but moved on within days, because the Swiss authorities had strict orders against former officers of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy.² The failed constitutional risings of 1820 and 1821 in Naples, Piedmont and Lombardy brought the first larger group. Piedmontese conspirators sentenced in their absence settled in the villages of the Sottoceneri: the priest Francesco Tubi of Oleggio, condemned to twenty years, at Castel San Pietro, the lawyer Carlo Modesto Massa of Asti, condemned to death, at Rovio, and the lawyer Francesco Romagnoli of Alessandria at Melano.³ Count Giovanni Grilenzoni of Reggio arrived in Lugano in 1821, married there and never left. The abbot Francesco Bonardi lived at Roveredo in the Mesolcina until his death in 1834 and acted as an intermediary between Piedmontese conspirators and the republican network of Filippo Buonarroti.⁴

These men were few, educated and in most cases of independent means. They lived quietly in villages close to the frontier, where they could receive letters and visitors from home and where the cantonal police, which was small and locally rooted, had no reason to disturb them. The historian Sergio Romano, reviewing Giuseppe Martinola's study of the exiles, observed that "gli esuli non sono mai un corpo estraneo alla società ticinese": the exiles were never a foreign body in Ticinese society.⁵ They spoke the same language, shared the same Catholic upbringing and often had relatives, business partners or creditors on the Swiss side of the border. Several of them became citizens of their villages, sat on local councils or, like Massa, received honorary cantonal citizenship. The integration of the first generation explains why the canton later found it so hard to treat the exiles as foreigners whose presence could be negotiated away.

The Ciani brothers and the liberal turn of 1830

The most influential exiles were Giacomo and Filippo Ciani, sons of a Milanese merchant-banker whose family came from Leontica in the Val di Blenio. Giacomo Ciani (1776–1868) worked in his father's bank, represented the Lombard Chamber of Commerce at the Consulta of Lyon in 1801 and joined a delegation to Paris in 1814 that pleaded for Lombard autonomy.⁶ After the Austrian return he joined the carbonari and probably helped to finance the Piedmontese rising of 1821. To escape the trial of Federico Confalonieri's conspirators he left Milan in 1822 and spent the following years in Switzerland, France and London. In Geneva he met Mazzini, the historian Sismondi and the jurist Pellegrino Rossi. He settled permanently in Lugano in 1833, became a Ticinese citizen and sat in the Grand Council from 1830 until his death, in the Federal Diet in 1841 and in the National Council from 1858 to 1860.⁷

The Ciani brothers combined three things that were rare among exiles: capital, a Ticinese family origin that allowed them to claim citizenship, and a network that reached from Milan to London. By 1830 they were coordinating the movements of refugees and supporting them financially. They bought property first in Bellinzona and then in Lugano.⁸ When the conservative regime of the landamano Giovan Battista Quadri collapsed in 1830, as described in Chapter C.I, Quadri blamed the writings of Stefano Franscini and the organizing work of Giacomo Ciani. Martinola records that he pursued Ciani with "un odio implacabile", an implacable hatred.⁹ The political alliance between Ticinese liberals and Italian exiles was therefore present from the beginning of the liberal canton. It explains why Austria regarded the radical governments of Ticino after 1839 as accomplices of the conspirators and why the liberals regarded the defence of the exiles as a defence of their own regime.

Notes

1. Giuseppe Martinola, "I primi esuli", Scuola ticinese no. 78, PDF, https://m4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.78/ ST_78_Martinola_primi_esuli.pdf (consulted 4 October 2026), on Ranza's arrival in Lugano in 1791 as the first documented Italian political exile. On the common bailiwicks see Chapter A.II. ↩
2. Martinola, "I primi esuli" (above): Foscolo had left Milan "di soppiatto ... per non prestar ... il giuramento all'Austria" and was refused by the Swiss authorities because of the orders concerning officers of the former Kingdom of Italy. ↩
3. Martinola, "I primi esuli" (above), on Tubi, Massa and Romagnoli. The same author, "La tipografia Elvetica di Capolago", Scuola ticinese no. 94, PDF, https://m4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.94/ ST_94_Martinola_tipografia_Elvetica_Capolago.pdf (consulted 4 October 2026), describes their later role in the Tipografia Elvetica. ↩
4. Martinola, "I primi esuli" (above), on Grilenzoni and on Bonardi's contacts with Buonarroti's network. ↩
5. Sergio Romano, review of Giuseppe Martinola, Gli esuli italiani nel Ticino 1791–1847 (Lugano 1980), Scuola ticinese no. 85, PDF, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.85/ ST_85_Romano_gli_esuli_italiani_nel_Ticino_1791-1847.pdf (consulted 4 October 2026). ↩
6. Carlo Agliati, "Ciani, Giacomo", in Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS), version of 19 May 2008, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/003503/ (consulted 4 October 2026). ↩
7. Agliati, "Ciani, Giacomo" (above), with the dates of his offices; the article also states that his Ticinese citizenship was definitively recognized only after the liberal revolution of 1839. ↩
8. Martinola, "I primi esuli" (above), on the role of the brothers as coordinators and financiers of the refugees and on their purchases of property. ↩
9. Martinola, "I primi esuli" (above). On the fall of the Quadri regime in 1830 see Chapter C.I. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.