Inside the abandoned Santa Margherita – Lanzo d’Intelvi funicolar

The funicular railway that connected Lanzo with Santa Margherita di Valsolda, and therefore the Intelvi Valley with Lake Lugano, Switzerland, was designed and built by the Santa Margherita Funicular Company with the aim of facilitating tourism.
The corresponding project was drawn up by engineer Pfaltz, perfected by specialist engineer Bucher and finally approved by the Higher Council of Public Works in the session of 21 June 1903.

It was inaugurated on September, 29 1907, after the golden age of the Belle Epoque, a period of French and European history that began after the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and continued until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Occurring during the era of the French Third Republic, it was a period characterised by optimism, enlightenment, regional peace, economic prosperity, nationalism, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations. In this era of France’s cultural and artistic climate, the arts markedly flourished, and numerous masterpieces of literature, music, theatre and visual art gained extensive recognition.
The Belle Époque was so named in retrospect, when it began to be considered a continental European “Golden Age” in contrast to the horrors of the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, as well as a period in which, according to historian R. R. Palmer, “European civilisation achieved its greatest power in global politics, and also exerted its maximum influence upon peoples outside Europe.”

Until 1954 the funicular also provided freight services.
The expansion of private motorization led to such a decisive drop in passengers that it caused serious management problems, so much so that the funicular made its last run on September 19, 1977.
You can still see two carriages, one at each terminus, the track and the steps of the staircase that flanked the route and was used for maintenance (today impracticable because many of them are missing).
In 2020, thanks to a €200,000 grant from the Lombardy Region, the pre-feasibility project for its reactivation was drawn up, which envisaged a total cost of around €10 million, in addition to establishing the economic sustainability of the structure for tourism purposes in the event of reopening.
Maybe in 2025?

In any case, the small village of Santa Margherita can now only be reached by lake, which is why it has remained uninhabited.
Except for the first Sunday in July, when every year the Valsolda local tourist board organizes a festival that brings the streets of this ghost town back to life, allowing visitors to visit the area and have lunch on the lakeside.