From borderland to canton: Parts A to C

A Lombard periphery on a European road

Part A showed that the territory of today's Ticino lived for most of its history as the northern edge of a Lombard world. Its dioceses were Como and Milan. Its lords were first the bishops, then the commune of Como and finally the Visconti and Sforza dukes, while its markets depended on Lombard grain, salt and merchants (Chapter A.I). The opening of the Schöllenen gorge in the early thirteenth century turned the upper valleys into a corridor of European traffic and gave the Leventina, the Riviera and Bellinzona an income from porterage, tolls and the provisioning of travellers that agriculture could never have provided.¹ Accounts were kept in Milanese lire of 240 denari while payment was made in a variety of coins, and credit took the form of notarial rent charges and sales with a right of repurchase.² The habit of keeping accounts in more than one unit, of relying on written instruments enforceable on either side of a political line and of living from the difference between two jurisdictions is older than any bank in Lugano.

Chapter A.II then described three centuries of subjection. Between 1403 and 1516 the Confederates acquired the valleys and lake towns in three waves, each made possible by a crisis of the Duchy of Milan, and eight bailiwicks survived as common lordships of one, three or twelve cantons until the spring of 1798.³ The ruling cantons confirmed the local statutes and left communal self-government to the vicinanze (village communities), so that regular taxes remained light. Justice, by contrast, lay in the hands of landfogti (bailiffs, German Landvögte) who had often bought their office, served for two years and drew their income from fees, fines and confiscations under the limited control of the annual sindacato. The chapter argued that the modern guarantees of salaried judges, fines that accrue to the State and supervisors without a stake in the revenue they oversee are the institutional answers to these defects. Trust in Lugano rests, in this reading, on the memory of a public justice that could not be relied upon.

Exported skill and transit trade

The two economic pillars of the old territory were exported skill and transit. Chapter A.III followed the builders, stucco-workers and painters of the lake villages to papal Rome, the Italian courts, Central Europe and Russia. Domenico Fontana of Melide raised the obelisk in front of St Peter's for Sixtus V, and Domenico Trezzini spent the last thirty years of his life as architect of the new city of St Petersburg.⁴ Their earnings came home as coin and bills of exchange, through merchants and fellow villagers, and notaries converted them into houses, land, dowries and chapels. The chapter read these practices as an early form of the work that private bankers, trustees and family offices perform today for families whose members and assets are dispersed across several countries.

Chapter A.IV followed the goods. Carriers' corporations held monopolies over stages of the Gotthard road, public warehouses recorded the loads and the dazio (toll, German Zoll) taxed them at every stage. The Milanese capitulations, a series of peace treaties and renewals that the Historical Dictionary of Switzerland lists from the settlement of 1426 to the renewal of 1552 and that ended with the capitulation of 1705, secured toll privileges and access to Lombard grain and salt.⁵ The better-known Capitolato di Milano of 1639 belongs to a different relationship, since it was concluded by Spain with the Grisons over the Valtellina and the eastern passes. Wherever monopolies, export bans and tariffs differed on the two sides of the border, goods moved outside the law as well as within it, so that smuggling became a structural feature of the economy. The chapter closed with a rule of present law that acquires particular meaning in such a territory: qualified fraud in customs matters is now a predicate offence to money laundering.⁶

Notes

1. See Chapter A.I. DSS, art. "Gotthard", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007466/, on the opening of the Schöllenen around 1200 and the role of the pass from the thirteenth century. ↩
2. See Chapter A.I. DSS, art. "Lira", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/013670/ (1 lira = 20 soldi = 240 denari; the lira as a unit of account). ↩
3. See Chapter A.II. Lucienne Hubler, "Ennetbirgische Vogteien", in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 4 October 2017, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/046979/. ↩
4. See Chapter A.III. Alessandro Ippoliti, "Fontana, Domenico", Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 48 (Rome 1997), https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/domenico-fontana_(Dizionario-Biografico)/; Mario Redaelli and Pia Todorović Redaelli, "Trezzini, Domenico", HLS, version of 10 April 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/019162/. ↩
5. See Chapter A.IV. HLS, art. "Mailänder Kapitulate" (Fritz Glauser, version of 13 January 2011), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017199/, on toll freedom, the regulation of legal proceedings and the supply of grain and salt, listing peace treaties of 1426, 1441, 1479 and 1503 and renewals in 1450, 1467, 1477, 1483, 1496, 1498, 1512, 1533 and 1552. On the capitulation of 1705 and on the Capitolato of 1639 with the Grisons see Chapter A.IV. ↩
6. Federal Act on Administrative Criminal Law of 22 March 1974 (ACLA), SR 313.0, Art. 14 para. 4, as discussed in Chapter A.IV; Swiss Criminal Code (SCC), SR 311.0, Art. 305bis. ↩

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 October 2026.