Flag of Ticino

The flag of Ticino is a field divided in two: red above and blue below. It looks like a modernist design, but it was born with the canton itself in 1803, when Ticino did not yet exist as a state. It is the only canton in Switzerland with an Italian-speaking population.

How it came about

The southern lands were conquered by the founding cantons, which ruled these valleys between 1440 and 1512. In 1798, with the Helvetic Republic, Lugano and Bellinzona were organised as separate cantons, and in 1803 they were merged into the new canton of Ticino. On 26 May 1803 the Grand Council decreed that the colours of the canton would be red and blue, without saying how to place them. Since the arms of the main cities were mostly red, red won the day, but for more than a century nobody knew whether the division was vertical or horizontal.

How it has changed

September 1804 settled on red above, a decree of 1922 repeated the rule without fixing the loose drawings, and the resolution of 6 October 1930 put things in order once and for all: square field, red and blue in horizontal stripes, the reverse of the arms, which are borne red and blue vertically. The military flag of 1809 already used red over blue with golden mottos.

What it means

• Red and blue: the meaning was lost. The most plausible theory makes them come from the colours of the districts that formed the canton; other readings point to the colours of Paris, in gratitude to the France that gave Ticino its sovereignty.

Fun facts

1. Arms and flag do not match

   The arms carry the red and blue vertically, with red on the heraldic right; the flag has them horizontally. They are the same colours turned ninety degrees, and confusing one with the other is a classic.

2. Two hundred years of disorder

   The order of 1803 did not fix the placement and the one of 1922 was still vague; it was not until 1930 that a cantonal decree said once and for all how each colour goes.

3. Before red and blue, the cross

   The bailiffs of the sixteenth century in these lands flew a white cross on a red ground, the sign of lordship by the old cantons; today’s red and blue is an invention of the Napoleonic era.

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