Market towns and the lake trade

Lugano: a lakeside borgo in Como's orbit

Medieval Lugano was a borgo with a harbour, a market square, the collegiate church of San Lorenzo above the town and a castle that changed hands with each change of lordship.¹ It was the natural centre of the district between the Ceneri and the lake of Como. Its market collected the produce of the surrounding valleys: chestnuts, wine, cheese, livestock, timber, charcoal and building stone. Grain, salt, textiles and iron came in from Como and Milan. The town's economic life was organized around the weekly market and around a number of annual fairs, which drew traders from the whole region and from across the lake.² The commune regulated the market through its statutes, fixing the places where goods could be sold, the weights and measures that had to be used and the dues that sellers paid.

Lugano's position on the lake gave it a function beyond its local market. Goods coming from Como could be carried overland to Capolago at the southern end of the lake, shipped to Lugano and sent on over the Monte Ceneri to Bellinzona and the passes. Goods from the Valtellina and from the eastern side of Lake Como could reach Lugano via Porlezza. The lake route was cheaper than the land route for heavy loads. The lakeside villages lived from the water as well. Bissone supplemented its economy with the income from ferry services on the lake, while in 1555 the Federal Diet granted Melide, Bissone and Morcote the monopoly of selling fish at Lugano.³ The transport system was modest by the standards of the Gotthard route, but it gave Lugano a role as a transhipment point that the town never lost.

Locarno and the Lake Maggiore corridor

Locarno, at the northern end of Lake Maggiore, had a different profile. It was the market of the Maggia valley, the Verzasca and the Centovalli, whose inhabitants came down to sell cattle, cheese and wood and to buy grain, salt and wine. It was also a port on the most important waterway of the Milanese north.⁴ From Locarno and from the nearby port of Magadino, where goods coming from Bellinzona were loaded onto boats, the lake led south to Sesto Calende and to the river Ticino, and from there through the Naviglio Grande to Milan. The Naviglio Grande, a canal built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, connected the Ticino with the city and carried, among much else, the marble of Candoglia on the western shore of Lake Maggiore for the building of Milan cathedral from the late fourteenth century onwards.⁵

The Lake Maggiore corridor made Locarno a place of warehouses, boatmen and merchants. Its noble families, the capitanei and their successors, held tolls, fishing rights and landing rights on the lake. Some of them engaged directly in trade and money-lending. The families that adopted the Reformation and were forced into exile in 1555, the Orelli and the Muralto among them, belonged to this milieu of landowners, notaries, officials and merchants whose wealth combined landed income, feudal rights and commercial activity. Chapter B.II follows them north. In Zurich the sons of Aloisio Orelli exported twisted yarn and woollen and cotton cloth to northern Italy. The family moved into the silk trade in the seventeenth century, so that around 1700 its six trading houses were the leading commercial firms of the city. Later generations turned to banking and publishing, while the Muralto founded the Zurich and Bernese branches of the Muralt. Their role in Zurich had roots in the commercial culture of fifteenth-century Locarno.⁶

Notes

1. DSS, art. "Lugano (comune)" (above). ↩
2. DSS, art. "Lugano (comune)" (above), on Lugano as the seat of a market in 984. On the fairs see Chapter A.IV. ↩
3. DSS, art. "Melide", version of 27 July 2023, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002183/2023-07-27/ (the fish monopoly of 1555 for Melide, Bissone and Morcote); DSS, art. "Bissone", version of 27 July 2023, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/002142/2023-07-27/ ("economia era integrata dagli introiti dei servizi di traghetto sul lago"). ↩
4. DSS, art. "Locarno (comune)" (above), on the market privileges of 1164 and 1224. ↩
5. Wikipedia, "Naviglio Grande", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naviglio_Grande (consulted as a last resort): begun in 1177, navigable by 1272, used for the transport of marble for the cathedral from 1386. ↩
6. Rodolfo Huber and Martin Illi, "Orelli", DSS, version of 3 May 2017, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/020179/ (exile of 1555, textile exports, the six silk firms around 1700, banking and publishing); Miriam Nicoli, "Muralto, Barbara", DSS, version of 27 January 2026, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/it/articles/062270/ ("Dopo l'espulsione i Muralto abbandonarono il borgo di origine e fondarono i rami zurighese e bernese dei Muralt"). See Chapter B.II. ↩

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.