Lugano appears as a working lakeside town and a point of passage, its hotels, houses, gardens, and boat landings glimpsed from the water. The novel gives it significance through movement: Donna Fedele waits near Porto Ceresio for a steamer coming from Ponte Tresa, Lelia travels past Lugano toward San Mamette, and Massimo Alberti goes there to arrange the transport of Benedetto’s body. Rather than pausing to establish Lugano as a destination in its own right, these scenes make the town a threshold between routes, decisions, and states of mind.

Lakeside Setting and Routes

The town is presented from the lake as a sequence of human and built features: stately hotels, damp houses, and dark gardens rising toward low cloud. From the steamer, its urban edge is not a static panorama but something temporarily visible, then obscured. As the boat leaves its landing and turns toward the upper lake, the buildings and gardens recede behind rain and distance. Lugano’s setting is therefore defined by the changing view from the water as much as by its role as a place where passengers embark and disembark.

The surrounding water connects Lugano to other settlements along the lake. Lelia’s journey continues past a succession of stops, including Gandria, Santa Margherita, Oria, San Mamette, Osteno, Cima, and Porlezza. Lugano is one point in that chain, not the end of her journey. The steamer’s slow departure, pushed from the landing by hand, gives the transition a deliberate pace: the town falls away behind her while the vessel turns toward the mist-covered lake.

Donna Fedele Waiting at the Water

Donna Fedele’s approach to the crossing begins at Porto Ceresio, where the first sight of the lake signals that she is nearing her goal. She is physically unsteady and must rely on a porter to carry her valise, bag, and umbrella stand to a café overlooking the water. She waits there for the steamer from Ponte Tresa, having tasted almost none of the milk she ordered. Across the lake, Morcote stands silent; beyond it, the mountains rise over the lake’s winding course toward Lugano, which remains out of sight.

The calm landscape offers the peace Donna Fedele cannot feel. The water is still under the fierce sun, the terrace is empty, and the mountains suggest rest, yet her anxiety makes that quiet a contrast rather than a comfort. When the boat appears beyond a wooded headland, she must gather herself to reach the boarding shelter. Her brief wait shows the crossing as a physical ordeal as well as a geographical one: even the few steps to the landing seem to require help. Lugano belongs to this scene as the unseen point toward which the lake route leads, close in the geography but not yet reached in her anxious anticipation.

Lelia’s Passage Beyond Lugano

Lelia arrives at Porto Ceresio in rain. The mist hides the mountains and softens the lake, and she takes comfort in the delayed sight of a boat because it postpones the meeting she fears. Once aboard, she sits alone at the stern, her attention reduced to the regular pounding of the engines and the beat of her own heart. Asked where she is going, she names San Mamette rather than Lugano, as if the destination has already been chosen for her. Learning that the journey will take more than an hour and will stop at Lugano first briefly eases her; the intermediate stop gives her more time before the encounter she imagines ahead.

As the steamer passes Lugano, the town’s damp buildings and dark gardens slide by in the rain. The sequence of stops makes the passage feel suspended: passengers come and go, while Lelia remains absorbed in the approach to San Mamette, which she regards as a place of mystery. Once the boat turns away from Lugano, the town blurs behind it. At Gandria the rain ceases, the wind strengthens, and the lake and mountains take on a darker, more imposing aspect. Lelia rises and goes to the bow, no longer sitting passively through the journey. The shift in weather and her movement mark a change in her resolve as the route carries her farther from Lugano and toward Valsolda.

Practical and Narrative Significance

Lugano also serves Massimo Alberti’s practical duties. On the day before Benedetto’s funeral, Massimo goes there to hire the steamer that will carry Benedetto’s body from Porto Ceresio to Oria. The errand places the town within the preparations for a public religious ceremony that troubles Massimo: he reveres Benedetto, but no longer shares the beliefs the funeral will publicly affirm. Lugano is not the site of that conflict’s resolution, but it is part of the concrete work required to honor the dead.

Across these journeys, Lugano links private distress to ordinary transport and obligation. Donna Fedele’s anxious wait, Lelia’s passage through rain toward San Mamette, and Massimo’s arrangements for Benedetto’s funeral give the same lakeside town distinct functions. It is a visible stop, an anticipated crossing point, and a place where necessary arrangements are made. Its narrative force lies in this transience: characters move through or toward it, while their attention remains fixed on what lies beyond.