Over the course of its long and rich history, Carlo Cattaneo House has been variously associated with politics, culture and the hospitality industry, as well as many noted personalities.
The first documentary evidence of this historic residence dates to the 17th century when it was the country house of the Maggi family. With its enchanting location and wonderful view of the lake, the residence was acquired by the Peri family in the 18th century who transformed it into a meeting place for intellectuals and visionaries.
Lawyer and liberal politician, promoter of the values of liberty and independence, Pietro Peri hosted friends and political refugees in the property. Among his most illustrious visitors was Polish national hero Tadeusz Kościuszko, a guest here in 1816. It was also here that Carlo Cattaneo spent the final twenty years of his life, between 1849 and 1869, turning the house into a hive of intellectual fervour and cultural exchange.
In the 20th century the residence moved with the times, becoming first a restaurant with boarding house and later a haven for artists and thinkers. Its guests in this period included Latvian exiles Rainis and Aspazija, who spent the first years of their stay in Ticino here. In 1972 the property was purchased by the Municipality of Castagnola which, in 1980, transformed it into the headquarters of the City of Lugano’s historical archive, a function it performed until 2019.
Following the painstaking regeneration work of architect Christophe Almeida Direito, in 2022 the house began a new chapter as the home of IBSA Foundation, a workshop for research and thinking as well as a point of reference on Lugano’s cultural panorama.