Salzburg, Bavaria and Swabia

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In Salzburg the new cathedral was built between 1614 and 1628 to designs by Santino Solari, a master from the lake region whom Archbishop Markus Sittikus had appointed chief architect in 1612.¹ In Bavaria the Graubünden architects Enrico Zuccalli and Giovanni Antonio Viscardi, both from the Mesolcina, worked for the electors in Munich, while Donato Giuseppe Frisoni of Laino in the Val d'Intelvi directed the building of the Ludwigsburg residence for the duke of Württemberg in the early eighteenth century.² These masters were not from today's Ticino, but they worked side by side with Ticinese stucco-workers and painters. The historical literature therefore treats them as part of the same regional migration from the southern Alpine lakes and valleys.

Poland and Scandinavia

The kings of Poland of the Vasa dynasty employed masters from the Lake of Lugano in Kraków and Warsaw. Giovanni Battista Trevano, from the Lugano region, worked on the rebuilding of the royal castle of Wawel after the fire of 1595 and on churches in Kraków, and Costante Tencalla of Bissone designed the Column of Sigismund III in Warsaw, erected in 1644.³ Northern Europe also drew on the lake masters, although on a smaller scale. Domenico Trezzini worked for the Danish crown in Copenhagen before he was recruited for Russia, which shows that the Russian recruitment drew on a pool of Italian-speaking masters already active in Protestant northern Europe.⁴

Domenico Trezzini and the building of St Petersburg

Domenico Trezzini was born around 1670 in Astano in the Malcantone. After four years at the Danish court he was called to Russia by Peter the Great in 1703, the year in which the tsar founded St Petersburg at the mouth of the Neva, and reached the new city in 1704.⁵ He remained in Russia until his death in St Petersburg in 1734 and became the principal architect of the new capital during its first three decades. His works include the stone fortifications of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Peter and Paul Cathedral (1712–1733) with its tall spire, the Summer Palace of Peter the Great (1710– 1714), the first plans of the Alexander Nevsky monastery and the building of the Twelve Colleges, which housed the new ministries and today belongs to the University of St Petersburg.

Trezzini also designed standard house types for different social classes, which the tsar prescribed for the new city. He also trained Russian pupils in his office, thereby transferring the technical knowledge of the lake tradition to a Russian profession.⁶ His career illustrates a variant of the emigrant model: the master left for good, but he brought relatives and assistants from home, corresponded with his village and remitted money to his family. In Switzerland he is remembered today as the architect of Peter I. In 2003, when St Petersburg marked its tercentenary, Ticino and the Russian city prepared exhibitions devoted to his work.⁷ Other masters from the Malcantone and the Luganese followed him to Russia, including Pietro Trezzini of Astano, who worked in St Petersburg from 1726 into the 1760s. More than a century later Giuseppe Trezzini (1832–1885) of the same village collaborated in St Petersburg and Moscow on the Mariinsky and Bolshoi theatres.⁸

Notes

Wikipedia, "Salzburg Cathedral", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzburg_Cathedral, and "Santino Solari", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santino_Solari (both used as a last resort). ↩
Wikipedia, "Enrico Zuccalli", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Zuccalli; "Giovanni Antonio Viscardi", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Antonio_Viscardi; "Donato Giuseppe Frisoni", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donato_Giuseppe_Frisoni; "Ludwigsburg Palace", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwigsburg_Palace (all used as a last resort). ↩
Wikipedia, "Giovanni Battista Trevano", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Trevano, and "Sigismund's Column", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigismund%27s_Column (both used as a last resort). ↩
Mario Redaelli and Pia Todorović Redaelli, "Trezzini, Domenico", Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 10 April 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/019162/. ↩
Mario Redaelli and Pia Todorović Redaelli, "Trezzini, Domenico", Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 10 April 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/019162/. ↩
Mario Redaelli and Pia Todorović Redaelli, "Trezzini, Domenico", Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), version of 10 April 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/019162/. ↩
SWI swissinfo.ch, "Domenico Trezzini: l'architetto di Pietro I", 15 July 2003, https://www.swissinfo.ch/ita/cultura/domenico-trezzini-l-architetto-di-pietro-i/3321502. ↩
DSS, "Trezzini, Pietro", https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/fr/articles/024558/; Mario Redaelli and Pia Todorović Redaelli, "Trezzini, Giuseppe", HLS, version of 10 April 2014, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/048889/2014-04-10/. ↩

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.

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Salzburg, Bavaria and Swabia

Poland and Scandinavia

Domenico Trezzini and the building of St Petersburg

Notes

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