Ascona is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.
It has a population of about 5000 and is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore.
The town is a popular tourist destination, and holds a yearly jazz festival, the New Orleans Jazz Festival Ascona.
The "Monte Verità" (literally Hill of Truth) in Ascona has an important historical background. At the beginning of the 20th century, a colony was founded on it which preached the return to nature (see [1] para. 35).
The colony attracted a large number of artists, anarchists and other famous people, including Hermann Hesse, Carl Jung, Erich Maria Remarque, Hugo Ball, Else Lasker-Schüler, Stefan George, Isadora Duncan, Paul Klee, Rudolf Steiner, Mary Wigman, Max Picard, Ernst Toller, Henri van de Velde, Rudolf Laban, Frieda and Else von Richthofen, Otto Gross, Erich Mühsam and Gustav Stresemann.