In 1882, the construction of the Gottardo railway line, from Milano and Genova, unified the fate of the territory of the upper Lombard Verbano: the entire coastline was crossed by the railway, giving concrete form to the area's aspirations towards tourist and industrial development already underway in the preceding decades.

A tourist vocation and significant economic growth, amid remarkable infrastructural undertakings at the end of the 19th century, an entrepreneurial class committed to the progressive development of the territory and inclined to express it through an appropriate and novel style, and, not least, a corps of technicians, engineers, architects and master builders ready to bring back to their homelands the echoes of the most advanced trends: these were the premises of the Liberty season on lago Maggiore.

Liberty, which in Luino confirms the driving role of this town on the shores of lago Maggiore — capable, thanks to the construction of the railway station along the Gottardo line, of finding all the energy needed to support and relaunch the opportunities offered by the new infrastructure: in 1884 the town completed a broad urban plan to connect the ancient hilltop nucleus with the distant station on the alluvial plain of the river Tresa, and the municipality itself financed with 11,000 lire the construction of the narrow-gauge railway station to Ponte Tresa (and Lugano). That same year the first Grand Hotel was built, and existing hotels were renovated with new comforts. In 1885 the Banca Popolare was founded, while the mid-19th-century industrial plants doubled their floor space and renewed their appearance.

Luino, one might say, made itself — with grace, with elegance and with open-mindedness: the two tourist guides printed in 1903 and 1910 are its symbol: elegant in their graphic design, rich in flowing lines and graceful female figures, and careful in their content — precise and attentive to the various nuances of an area perennially poised between lake and mountain, between holiday resort and rural culture — they encapsulate the aspirations of these places to present themselves with a fresh and contemporary face.

The building momentum that swept Luino following the construction of the international station continued uninterrupted until the eve of the First World War: the gaps along the broad avenues leading to the station were filled in, forming, in effect, an entirely new town set against the ancient inhabited nucleus.

The lakefront promenade of viale Dante, laid out from 1898, completing a double row of plane trees that over time has taken on monumental proportions, was configured as the ideal stage on which to display, on the façades of villas and apartment buildings, a style befitting the rank of a bourgeoisie eager to secure one of the most pleasant locations in the country: thus the transition from the display of a sometimes refined eclecticism to the new style came naturally.

Villa Guerrini

The villa is one of the first works designed by architect Giuseppe Petrolo in Luino. This villa, like others of the period, would later serve as inspiration for the design of Palazzo Verbania. 

Villa Guerrini, dating from 1902, is characterised by a broad and confident use of smooth walls (that is, devoid of relief decorations, as academic tradition required), by wave-pattern decorative motifs incised into the plaster and, as later in the Kursaal, by the termination of volumes with flat-roofed terraces. The villa is located on the road leading to the Swiss border. Along the same street, other notable villas can be admired.

Villa Hussy

The original layout, with a square plan, dates from 1876 and was the work of the wealthy Barozzi family. A first change to the floor plan was made at the end of the 19th century by Pietro Pozzi, who modified the structure of the building, moving it much closer to the current rectangular arrangement. 

Following the purchase of the complex by Giuseppe Battaglia in 1908, further interventions of a purely aesthetic nature were carried out: on the façade facing corso XXV Aprile, a series of stacked verandas topped by terraces and a bow window were added; friezes and balustrades embellished the building with distant Liberty references, and a sober staircase with an elegant wrought-iron railing connected the floors of the house. 

Upon the owner's death in 1935, the villa passed into the hands of the Hussy family, who also owned four other residences, and who in turn donated it to the Città di Luino in the second half of the 20th century. The municipality transformed the villa into a modern, well-equipped cultural hub, relocating the Biblioteca civica there during the 2000s.

Villino De Albertis

Along corso XXV Aprile a succession of dignified apartment buildings stand side by side: among these, the villino De Albertis at no. 66 stands out, built in 1908 to a design by Milanese architect Giovanni Terragninj, by the local firm Barassi e Bini. The De Albertis family was originally from Milano and ran a construction company. The villa follows the customary turret-with-trifora scheme and rather rigid forms: noteworthy are the ironwork details, with acroteria at the sides of the turret balcony, and the gate, whose circular decorative motifs are decidedly more sinuous.

Panificio Luinese

The building constructed in 1901 to a design by architect Giuseppe Petrolo still retains a Liberty character, from its architectural decorative elements to its painted decoration. 

Now a private commercial premises, it has also retained its original use over time: it was founded as a municipal bakery, with the aim of keeping the price of bread affordable. The public initiative followed a workers' protest that was suppressed violently in 1898.

Stazione ferroviaria

The passenger building of the Luino railway station is an imposing structure built between 1881 and 1882; it consists of a central body whose ground floor is almost entirely occupied by the "customs hall" (Swiss and Italian), connected via two single-storey wings to two-storey pavilions at either end. 

The upper floors of the central body and the pavilions are used as residential quarters. The north pavilion houses the Buffet on the ground floor; offices and public areas are arranged in the low connecting wings, joined by spacious vestibules and corridors, as was customary in the public architecture of the time. 

The building is over 140 metres long (170 with the sanitary facilities pavilions at the ends) and 30 metres wide (at the central body). The total usable floor area amounts to over 2,300 sq m; of these, around 590 are dedicated to corridors, vestibules and circulation spaces. The largest portion is still used as offices, storage, warehouses and service rooms (over 1,000 sq m). The perimeter walls are built in brick, probably alternating with stone, as can be seen in other buildings of the complex. The walls are finished with plaster. The roof, with primary and secondary timber framing and covering, is a hip roof (over the central body and the two lateral pavilions) and a pitched roof over the connecting wings. The covering is in Marseille tiles. 

The decorative elements are mainly executed in workable stone (Saltrio, according to contemporary sources) or in cement with appropriate decorative cladding. The base of the entire building, both facing the piazza (main façade) and the track side, is clad in shaped granite blocks (grey and pink from Baveno) in continuity with the other station buildings. Along the façades facing the piazza runs a pavement in beola and serizzo slabs, contemporary with the building. At the top of the main building ran a cresting in the form of a balcony, which still exists but was covered with copper sheets during a 1990s intervention. 

Despite the repetitive nature of many decorative elements and the stripping (of fittings, in particular) carried out repeatedly since the Second World War, the Luino station still presents a substantially well-preserved picture. Noteworthy are the marble floors of the customs hall, the iron and glass partitions separating the customs hall from the circulation corridors, and even the door handles and window fittings, which are largely the original ones. The most distinguished space is the "customs hall," with a fine mixed roof system — part with large iron skylights, part with a traditional timber structure — a space of considerable height, separated from a circulation corridor by a diaphragm of arches, columns and blind windows, ensuring a functional distinction while maintaining spatial continuity. 

The original furnishings and configuration of the Buffet de la Gare, profoundly altered in the 1940s, are lost. The room was worthy of the distinguished travellers passing through: kings, princes, consuls, cardinals and the lively social scene that chose Luino as the gateway to the lakes and to Italy. The buffet, effectively elevated to the rank of a "royal salon," was already heated by a gas system feeding «cast-iron radiators by the firm Moriggia di Intra»; it boasted modern kitchens equipped by the same firm, porcelain services from "casa Gerest" and "argenteria Brogli." The long room was adorned with six large richly decorated mirrors surmounted by the coats of arms of the two nations united by the railway (Switzerland and Italy), supplied by the firm "Cannetta di Milano negoziante in Specchi e Vetri."

Padiglione ex Officine Battaglia

Architect Giuseppe Petrolo made his first venture into the Liberty style with the expansion plan — unfortunately not fully executed — for the Battaglia industries.

For these, Giovanni Battaglia had commissioned the architect not merely a spatial extension but also a renewal of the company's image through a work explicitly linked to the most advanced contemporary developments — on a less grandiose scale than what was being prepared at the famous Poretti brewery in Induno Olona. Giovanni Battaglia, together with Teofilo Hussy, had founded the company for the Kursaal: the new firms and the new pavilion were intended to represent the modern cornerstones of Luino's new tourist and industrial era. 

Of the grand plan, only one pavilion facing the public road survives; the entire large factory (known as Viscontea) that extended behind it has disappeared, demolished after the company went bankrupt around 1950. The single pavilion, however, is capable of displaying considerable compositional and decorative assurance, even in its use of measured and sober decorative elements of elevated derivation, such as the large central "thermal" window (that is, drawn from a model typical of late Latin antiquity).

Villino Luini-Carletti

Villa Luini-Carletti (v.le Amendola 2/a) is a complex of buildings that grew up in close temporal and physical proximity to one another, designed by Milanese engineer Federico Luini, whose local origins remain to be established. 

In 1912, the main villa was built with highly refined details: it rises with a turret overlooking the lake and fitted with a tripartite window. The profiles of the trifora are tapered by sinuous projections of the mouldings. The entire eave soffit is enriched by an elaborate play of wooden pendants, still an eclectic legacy; but the window surrounds feature some of the least predictable details in all of the Luino area, for their elegant blending of geometric and floral motifs. The corners of the building are characterised by cement tiles laden with flowers; a memory of the classical corner element, this detail seems already to anticipate more modern decorative systems, no longer rationally arranged on façades but free in space from rigid compositional rules.

Rondò

It seems lifted from a 19th-century urban planning manual — as the perspectival backdrop to the avenue arriving from the station — the rondò built in 1912 at the end of the tree-lined viale Dante. It is a semicircular platform projecting over the waters of the lake, fitted with a balustrade of cement piers and wrought-iron parapets unified by a single flowing design of ribbon-like motifs, among the most beautiful and elegant on the lake's shores. Local craftsmen (the firm Pozzi for the concrete and the Pozzi blacksmiths for the ironwork) skilfully executed the design provided by the municipal secretary Morozio. The Rotonda — as it was popularly known — soon became an integral part of the city's collective memory and a place rich in literary associations. It gives its name to the annual journal "La Rotonda," conceived by a group of friends under the guidance of Vittorio Sereni and Piero Chiara. The aim of the Almanac was to compile "a sort of register in which the changing aspects of the city — architectural, natural, social and also economic — would be documented year by year alongside the revival of ancient memories." "La Rotonda," published by Francesco Nastro from 1979 to 1984 (the year of Sereni's death), continues in a new series begun in 1989 under the changed title "il Rondò."

Casa Barozzi

At the entrance to via Veneto, casa Barozzi (home of the Caffè Centrale) was built around 1918, perhaps by architect Petrolo or by engineer Giuseppe Negri, his collaborator. Noteworthy are the gates that line up to close the portico, with lively ironwork of the characteristic "whiplash" form, forged by the firm Orsenigo di Milano. On the balconies, cement half-busts of the principal Italian opera composers (Verdi, Rossini, etc.) dominate — a singular form of advertising devised by the first owner, who kept a musical instruments shop here. Under the café portico, two further recycled cement busts preserve the memory of two different local glories: the Leonardesque painter Bernardino Luini (at the beginning of the 20th century he was still believed to have been born in Luino) and Luigi Sbarra (Cossogno, 1843–Luino, 1897), a surveyor who contributed to the city's growth between the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the designer of the urban expansion plan along the two new road axes corresponding to corso XXV Aprile (1883–1885) and via Vittorio Veneto (from 1884), as well as the aqueduct. He was also the designer of numerous public, private and ecclesiastical buildings between Porto Valtravaglia, Luino and Maccagno: bridges (including the one over the Tresa between Luino and Germignaga), harbours, landing stages, roads and squares, town halls, nurseries and cemeteries. His is the elegant design of Casa Clerici, with the eponymous café of literary memory on the ground floor and the fine portico facing the old port of Luino (1886).

Kursaal (Palazzo Verbania) 

From 1882, railway convoys passed through Luino, between Berlino and Genova, disembarking distinguished personalities of a flourishing Belle Époque, bound to visit — by steam boat — the famous isole Borromee. From 1885, another railway line, to Ponte Tresa, had entered service, useful for those wishing to admire, in a single journey, the basins of three lakes, all highly regarded by touristes: Maggiore, di Lugano and di Como. 

At the turn of the century, the town's elite decided to equip itself with a Kursaal for "concerts, balls, gatherings, lectures, café, restaurant," at the centre of the lakefront promenade, which had in the meantime been renewed. It was 1904 when the Società anonima per il Kursaal entrusted the project to the Luino architect Giuseppe Petrolo (1872–1953), to whom it submitted architecture journals updated on the models developed in the most advanced European centres, with Vienna at the forefront. It was a winning collective choice: Petrolo undertook a felicitous synthesis and produced one of the first Liberty buildings on the lake, the most beautiful, moreover marking an entirely Luino-based achievement ahead of the Liberty season in the regional capital Varese.

 etrolo knew how to establish a dialogue with the landscape, shaping the volumes to create a cascade of terraces towards the panorama: on the roof, at the midpoint of the building, cantilevered over the water. He drew with a sure hand dark circles around the windows as if they were hot-air balloons. He forged the ironwork into sinuous curves. He curved the walls to enjoy the best view of the lake from the main hall and to increase its light. 

The building, whose original appearance has today been profoundly altered by subsequent modifications, was conceived as a white parallelepiped whose façades were articulated by pilasters joined at the base by a curvilinear plinth; in the white walls, the windows were surmounted by a dark circular attic. The roof was terraced; the crowning cresting, where cement vases continued the thrust of the pilasters, curved over the main façade to accommodate the advertising lettering. The building presented to the lake a rectangular single-storey hall, 22 metres long, where the succession of large windows with curvilinear profiles overturned the traditional relationships between solids and voids, offering the fullest possible view of the lake waters at one of the most beautiful points on the shore. 

The source of inspiration is Viennese: this is revealed by the layout which, despite the absence of mass in the white walls where windows and decorative elements seem to "float," presents a monumental design; it is confirmed by the literal adoption of certain details such as the alternating-colour chequered band that ran across all the façades. 

The Kursaal became the centre of social life in the town: in March 1913, an associate of Filippo Marinetti (the Sicilian Gesualdo Manzella Frontini) delivered a lecture there on Futurism. More than a decade later, as tastes changed and rooms were needed to convert it into a hotel under the name Verbania, the same architect enlarged the building, allowing pure Liberty details to survive and, above all, keeping intact the succession of belvederes and the large windows open to the lake. 

To this terrace Vittorio Sereni linked his most famous verses dedicated to Luino: "Improvvisa ci coglie la sera. / Più non sai / dove il lago finisca; / un murmure soltanto / sfiora la nostra vita / sotto una pensile terrazza [...]" (V. Sereni, Terrazza, 1938, in Frontiera). 

Piero Chiara made it the stage for countless pages dedicated to provincial life that have become part of Italy's collective literary heritage. In 1971 the hotel ceased its activity. It was the beginning of a new life. In 1975 an exhibition dedicated to Bernardino Luini (c. 1481–1532) was mounted there: the "Leonardesque" painter, native of the valleys above Luino, so famous in the 19th century that Queen Victoria, holidaying in Baveno in 1879, reportedly wished to set foot in Luino solely to visit the supposed birthplace of a master whose masterworks she would not have refused to own. From that exhibition onwards, the palazzo rose to the rank of a civic cultural centre (library, meetings, exhibitions and museum). 

At present, it is once again destined to gather the legacy of so much history: a respectful restoration of the palazzo has allowed it to house the literary archive of Vittorio Sereni and the papers of Piero Chiara — both of them, in different ways, indebted to this palazzo.