How to spend a day in Morcote
Updated: Aug 30
You can take a bus to a place that should only be accessible by rapture. A bus is how we arrived in Morcote, a picturesque Italian-speaking Swiss town on the shore of Lake Lugano featuring narrow cobblestone lanes, a lakeside promenade, and the spectacular Scherrer Park gardens.
It was an offhanded comment from my husband’s coworker that tipped us off on this little gem. The hotel staff (Hotel Admiral $350/night https://www.luganohoteladmiral.com/) recommended bus route 431 and reminded us of the Ticino Tickets (https://www.ticino.ch/en/ticket.html) that came with the room providing free rides on local transit. So the four of us and a local octogenarian waited together at the stop and boarded the bus bound for paradise.Half an hour later we disembarked at the lakeside promenade.
Turquoise water sprawled out on one side while lemon colored stone buildings climbed the hills on the other. Lycra clad cyclists navigated among Bentleys, Porches and Ferraris. Intrepid hikers, arriving from the summit of Monte San Salvatore, rested on shaded benches and enjoyed gelatos. Wood ducks paddled about in the shallows.
Our first order of business was lunch. We chose the Osteria la Terrazza Sul Lago, which boasts a patio over the lake, to the delight of both our stomachs and our eyes. As we passed heaping plates of burrata, gnocchi, risotto and polenta, mergansers dove nearby.
Wandering through Piazza Grande we stopped to admire this fresco at Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate. If you squint you can see what look like people scaling a barbed wire fence.
As we continued zigzagging through cobblestone alleys, we passed a bus load of elderly German tourists complaining about the number of stairs to Chiesa Santa Maria del Sasso https://www.visitmorcote.ch/The-Church-of-Saint-Maria-del-Sasso-5bed3d00. In fairness it is more than 400 steps; but you’re rewarded with an incredible view.
As we arrived in at the Scherrer Park gardens, the serene, manicured landscape of flowers, trees and statuary enveloped us. Fountains bubbled. Birds warbled. Tourists murmured.
Unbelievably, the gardens are free.
The park was created by Herman Scherrer, a Swiss man, between the 1930s and 1950s. Throughout the gardens you’ll find an eclectic collection of art inspired by Ancient Greece, Egypt and India.
After drinking in as much of the landscape as we could, we needed to head back to the hotel. We checked the schedule and made our way to the bus stop but, as we watched a water ferry skimming across the water, we pivoted to trying the boat instead. There was an additional cost to take the ferry as it isn’t covered by the Ticino Ticket but we thought the experience would be worth it.
Ferry routes and schedules can be found here:
https://www.lakelugano.ch/en. A refreshing breeze blew through our hair on the boat as we watched the mountainous shore drift by on our way back to our home base in Lugano.
