Chronicle of an architectural crime: how the village of Campione d'Italia lost its soul – and now wants to regain it

A former fishing village on Lake Lugano sells its soul to gambling – and is abandoned by its own luck. It sounds like the stuff of an ancient drama. But the village is real; it bears the name Campione d'Italia – of all things – and has become a symbol of failure. Now the champions are rehearsing their resurrection.

The widely visible monument to their failure is also their origin: a monstrosity bearing the words "Casino Municipale" in large letters. Designed by Ticino star architect Mario Botta, a hybrid of prison, power plant, and brutalist cathedral was erected at a cost of 150 million Swiss francs, with tiny windows resembling loopholes. When it replaced the dilapidated Belle Epoque-style casino in 2006, it was intended to transpose a glorious past into an even more glorious future.

Twelve years later, in midsummer 2018, the casino had reached rock bottom: the police cleared the dilapidated casino due to mismanagement, falsified accounts, and abuse of office. The municipality, as the sole owner, was tied to the operation for better or for worse, and owed €130 million. Most of the 2,000 residents lost their jobs. Thus, one of Italy's richest municipalities suddenly became one of the poorest, with an annual per capita income of around €10,000 – three years earlier, it had been six times as high. The Italian enclave, where payments were made in Swiss francs, the Swiss Post offered services, and Swisscom operated the landline telephones, seemed to be at an end. Casinos are also called gambling dens; here, purgatory seized not just a few individuals, but an entire collective.

At the foot of the building, we meet on a rainy August morning with Michele Cirigliano, a secondary school teacher in Zurich who also holds a degree in directing. He and Anton von Bredow made the documentary "Architecture of Happiness" about Campione and its casino, which is now being shown in cinemas. The lakeside promenade is almost deserted during our visit, and not only because of the gloomy weather. Patches of rain are eating into the precious stone façade, which towers directly above the lake.

In a modern metropolis, this colossus might perhaps have some appeal; it fits this environment perfectly—the product of a mania for which a monstrosity of its own was coined: megalomania. Planned during the last heyday of traditional casinos before the internet age, it was built with the ambition of creating the largest casino in Europe. Champions League: History is reminiscent of football clubs that went bankrupt because they wanted to become world-class.

"The casino constantly casts its shadow," says Cirigliano with a mixture of disgust and respect: "It's present everywhere in the village; you can feel it even in places where you can't see it." In his visually powerful film, the camera revels in the ugliness, alternating between wide shots and details, and the soundtrack delivers the verdict: One calls it "a unique monstrosity," another "the worst form of disfigurement," and the priest is reminded of the Tower of Babel. It is said that Botta was coerced step by step into expanding the project to a total area of ​​55,000 square meters on nine floors. He himself was previously critical of the result, but now prefers to remain silent.

The unpretentious film doesn't search for those responsible for the disaster; it assembles a mosaic from the ruins of a dream—and from the voices of ordinary people. They become a chorus of perspectives that blend with the history of this village and its casino, bringing some dynamism to a seemingly frozen environment. "When we first filmed, the casino had just closed. It was a total desolation," Cirigliano recalls.

There's the eccentric young unemployed man who always has his little goat, Lisa, with him and tends the flower boxes on the lake promenade because no one else will. Or someone who, under pressure from his father, returned to learn the trade of croupier in the casino, the pride of the village. Or the French chef who closed his Michelin-starred restaurant, "Da Candida," two years ago. By then, the kindergarten had long since closed. The exodus left its mark on the town.

The main part of the film, however, was shot in spring 2023. Gaming operations had resumed the previous year, albeit only on three of nine floors. The municipality had no plan B for how to market its fabulous lakeside location to tourists without a casino. The only idea was to reopen. The casino's once more than 500 jobs were reduced to a third (today, there are at least 200 again). The dream wages are a thing of the past, and the unused floors remain unused to this day, hardly suitable for other purposes. But hope for better times lives on.

A veil of nostalgia and melancholy covers this quiet little film. Between images that capture the decay of abandoned locations, there are black-and-white photos from a time when this mini-Monte Carlo, considered a tax haven, flourished. Thousands flocked there on weekends in search of entertainment and happiness: Amanda Lear performed, people went waterskiing, nightclubs were a party place, and restaurants dined until four or five in the morning. The shop and the village were booming until the 1990s.

While the old days are evocative, there's also a dark side: An expert in the film says that the underworld is always at play in casinos. During the heyday, moneylenders waited outside in cars, and rumor has it that many who couldn't repay paid with their lives. Behind closed doors, there are also whispers that the mafia and money laundering are still at play today.

One is vaguely reminded of Dürrenmatt's "The Visit of the Old Lady." The elderly lady would then be called Fortuna, and for almost a hundred years she would have brought wealth to the village, the entire community profiting along with her – and then collapsed together. There is, however, another twist: The revived casino generates annual profits of over 30 million euros, so that the community has almost paid off its debts, thanks in part to financial injections from Rome and the sale of family silver in the form of real estate.

However, the area is far from its former glory. The municipal administration has shrunk from over 100 employees to about a dozen, the long-enjoyed access to the Swiss healthcare system has been severely restricted, and many streets often appear deserted. "There's no longer a butcher, no bakery, no hairdresser, and at least now there's a dentist again," says Cirigliano.

We sit down with him in front of the "Campione Taverne" bar, right next to the modern boat station, which offers several daily connections to Lugano. On a weekend, the crowd is mostly day-trippers, strolling along the beach promenade and through the small historic village center, the only sights here. The tavern across the street is deserted; the village school is struggling to fill a single high school class. Older men are sipping coffee in the bar. The director, a second-generation Italian who grew up in Zurich's fourth district and still lives there, greets some of them by name.

Then Annalisa Mena joins us, a mysterious, sophisticated elderly lady, born and raised here. Her aura shapes the film; she experienced the golden age and still exudes a touch of it herself. She talks about the magical ambiance of the old casino, about the Egyptian King Farouk, who always ordered gnocchi al pomodoro, and about all the major industrialists of Lombardy who were great gamblers. In the morning, everything was quiet; the gambling began at 1 p.m., and it wasn't until 7 a.m. that peace returned.

The original casino opened in 1917, closed temporarily, and was then revived in 1933 by Mussolini, who wanted to turn Campione into an economic showcase village with the new addition "d'Italia." And today? The casino is doing well again, but of course never as well as it was twenty years ago, says Mena: "The world has reached a different point." She explains this world to us, quoting the Kabbalah, Herodotus, and Carl Gustav Jung, and arrives at her visions for the village.

First, tourism is needed, independent of the casino business (which she then immediately brings up again when she raves about the poker tournament with 1,500 players from all over the world). Second, investment in art is needed to fill the unused floors. Third, a first-class retirement home is needed, but not in the casino, which is unsuitable. Currently, she says, many Russians and Ukrainians are buying apartments. And the Chinese, whom she speaks expectantly about in the film? She grimaces: "They just want to profit."

At the end of "Architecture of Happiness," some villagers outline their dreams for the future of the village. The former croupier has lost faith that it will still exist in 50 years: "We're already only talking in memories."