07 Hotel du Parc

Texts by Rodolfo Huber

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The Hotel du Parc used to stand on Via San Gottardo in Muralto. Now in its place is, as we see, the Residenza al Parc. The original hotel was designed by architect Alessandro Ghezzi and built in 1893 on the commission of businessman and shopkeeper Francesco Scazziga, then mayor of Muralto. Between 1905 and 1920 the hotel was expanded several times what resulted in the demolition of the nearby old municipal house and St. Stephen's Church.

The destruction of the church outraged historians and archaeologists. Indeed, we are located in an area rich in history. When in the 1980s the original hotel was itself demolished to make way since 1986 for the new Residenza, archaeologists found several fruitful survey plots that with a considerable amount of finds dating back to the 1st century A.D. shed new light on the important "vicus," a Roman village in Muralto.

Numerous journalists and, according to some sources, the Czechoslovak diplomatic delegation also stayed at the Hotel du Parc during the 1925 Conference. Other documents, particularly the "Conference Bulletin," indicate instead that the representatives of Czechoslovakia stayed at the Grand Hotel.

The uncertainty of historians on this point is curious, if we consider the enormous journalistic attention with which the Peace Conference was followed and all the extraordinary worldliness it bestowed on Locarno for some ten days. But it is also true that it is a quisling compared to the historic meeting that ended with the signing of the Locarno Pacts.