Each story is rooted in real local history and landmarks
A child discovers bare footprints glowing on the hillside above Ascona on a warm summer night. Following them uphill through oleanders and palm trees, they meet the ghost of a young dancer from 1917 who needs a partner for the final performance of 'Song to the Sun' before the memory fades forever. Together they dance barefoot under the stars on the Mountain of Truth, and the child discovers that some ideas -- freedom, beauty, peace -- never grow old.
In the Museo Comunale d'Arte Moderna, a child touches one of Marianne Werefkin's 170 sketchbooks and is pulled into a vivid Expressionist Ascona where the lake shimmers purple, the Borgo's houses rearrange themselves like a kaleidoscope, and colours have emotions of their own. The child must find the painter herself, sheltering in her 16th-century palazzo, and return a stolen sketch before the painted world dissolves -- learning that art is not a copy of reality, but the truth beneath it.
On the Isole di Brissago, a child discovers that one of the garden's 2,000 plant species blooms only once a century -- and tonight is the night. Following the spirit of Baroness Antoinette de Saint Leger through the moonlit subtropical garden at midnight, past palms and camellias she planted over a hundred years ago, the child must find and protect the legendary flower before sunrise. Along the way, the Baroness tells how she transformed two barren rabbit islands into a paradise -- alone, after everyone else had left.
Behind one of the 27 bas-reliefs in the Collegio Papio cloister, a child discovers a hidden message scratched into the red granite by Bartolomeo Papio himself before he left Ascona for Rome in the 16th century. The message launches a treasure hunt through Ascona's four medieval castles -- San Michele, San Materno, dei Grillioni, and dei Carcani -- connected by the legendary underground passages that only a child small enough can squeeze through.
In the Chiesa dei Santi Pietro e Paolo, a child notices that a figure is missing from Serodine's 'Road to Emmaus' -- a pilgrim who was there yesterday has vanished from the canvas. Stepping through the Baroque painting into a world of candlelight and dusty roads, the child must walk the Road to Emmaus alongside the remaining painted pilgrims, find the lost figure, and return them to the canvas before the church bell strikes midnight and the painting is changed forever.
During JazzAscona, a child sitting on the Piazza Giuseppe Motta hears trumpet notes rising not from the stage but from beneath Lake Maggiore. Following the music in a small rowing boat, they discover a ghostly New Orleans riverboat anchored below the surface, where jazz musicians from every era play an eternal jam session. Louis Armstrong trades riffs with a Swiss alphorn player, and the child learns that the best music -- like the friendship between Ascona and New Orleans -- knows no borders.
A child camping on Monte Verita discovers that the old Bauhaus hotel comes alive at night. Each room is a portal to a different era: 1900, where barefoot utopians build a new society in the open air; 1915, where Hans Arp sketches broken branches on the lakeshore; 1917, where dancers rehearse 'Song to the Sun' in the meadow; 1929, where the Baron displays art from across the world. To find the 'truth' the mountain was named for and return home, the child must visit every room and understand that truth is not a single answer -- it is the courage to keep searching.
An old fisherman on the Borgo waterfront tells a child the story of when Ascona was nothing but nets, boats, and four crumbling castles on a lakeshore. The child falls asleep to the sound of lapping water and wakes in medieval Ascona -- the castrum of 1186 -- where they must help defend the tiny fishing village from raiders using only what a village of fishermen has: nets to tangle the enemy, boats to outmanoeuvre them on the lake, and the cunning of people who know every current and cove of their home waters.
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