When I Die, Cremate Me

June 19, 2007

Lugano is located on Lake Lugano in the Ticino Canton of Switzerland, the only Italian-speaking Canton in the country. We took a ferry to the another of the towns on the lake, a beautiful one named Morcote. It had actually been the most important city on the lake during the Middle Ages, but the Black Death killed everyone but seven families in the early 1400s, and the town never recovered. It remains a small, intimate place, with Patrician homes and cobbled alleyways everywhere. We got off the boat and, instead of exploring the hidden niches of the town, headed straight up the Biggest Staircase in the World (my poor calves!) to the Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Sasso, a beautiful renaissance church built where a man purportedly saw a vision of the Virgin Mary. The church was beautiful inside, with frescoes of female saints and beautiful marble mosaics on the floor. The baptistry was simple next door, the only true decoration being the elegant renaissance painting on the ceiling.

We headed to the cemetery next, but Brenda, Lizzy, and I found a secret staircase through an archway that Dr. O assured us would head straight into the cemetery. What she neglected to tell us, however, was that the staircase would head straight to the TOP of the cemetery--all the way to the ninth level (Dante, anyone?). That's right, this is a nine-level cemetery on the top of a mountain overlooking a lake. It's entirely pedestrian, and anytime someone is buried in one of the mausoleums, pallbearers have to cart that sucker up every staircase in existence to get there. I wouldn't do that to you guys--just cremate me and toss me in the lake. Expect the same treatment.