FONDAZIONE MONTE VERITÀ

Monte Verità, set in the hills overlooking Ascona and Lake Maggiore, has always been a pole of attraction and convergence of ideas, trends, experiments and historic personalities. The alternative and vegetarian colony of the early ^20th century created the myth of Monte Verità, which soon became a meeting place for anarchists, philosophers and intellectuals. The Ascona hill was first home to a sanatorium, then an artists' community around the 1920s, before being purchased by Eduard von der Heydt, a German banker and art collector. It then became a modern hotel resort, welcoming celebrities from the worlds of art, politics and culture. On the Baron's death, it was ceded to the canton of Ticino. Today, it is a multi-purpose institution comprising a cultural and museum center, hotel, restaurant and conference center. The park features Casa Selma, a small air-light hut built in 1904 by the first settlers, and Casa Anatta. The Casa Anatta has been restored as a center for a wide variety of exhibitions on subjects such as utopia and the reform of the soul. The main building houses the exhibition "Monte Verità. Le mammelle della verità" by Harald Szeemann, which presents various aspects of the hill's history. The Padiglione Elisarion in the park houses the painting Chiaro mondo dei beati(Clear World of the Blessed), painted between 1919 and 1929 by Elisar von Kupffer, a painter, poet, historian and playwright from the Baltic nobility.