The town is known for hosting the Locarno International Film Festival which takes place every year in August and involves open-air screenings at the main square, the Piazza Grande.

In 1934, in the vicinity of today's Via S. Jorio, a necropolis with 14 urn graves from the Early Bronze Age (about 14th century BC) were found.

The urns contained, in addition to burned bones, bronze ornaments, which had some fire damage, including, bangles, hairpins with conical head and slightly thickened neck, rings and knives.

The ceramic and bronze objects date from the Canegrate culture (named after a large necropolis in the province of Milan).

Many of the La Tène era grave goods (particularly from the 3rd–1st centuries BC) are Celtic style Fibulae or brooches.

[5] Between 1946 and 1949, a number of Roman era tombs were discovered on the terrace between the churches of Santa Maria in Selva and San Giovanni Battista in Solduno.

[6] The capitanei were a group of prominent noble families who emerged in the early Middle Ages and led Locarno.

The original capitanei were probably descendants of the old Lombard noble family of Da Besozzo from the county of Seprio, a historic region of Lombard Italy which comprised areas in southern Ticino and modern-day Italian provinces of Varese and Como on the western side of Lake Maggiore, and was centred in Castelseprio, some 20 kilometres south of Locarno.

However, they played an important role in the later conflicts in the 13th and 14th centuries between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and in the wars between Como and the Duchy of Milan.

[7] Starting in the Lombard period (after 569), the area around Locarno (and presumably the town) was part of the county Stazzona and later the Mark of Lombardy.

This expansion by Milan was countered by Henry II, who incorporated Locarno in 1002/04 with the surrounding areas into the Diocese of Como.

The Podestà or high government official, resided in the Casa della Gallinazza, which was burned in 1260 during the clashes between the Guelphs and Ghibellines.

In 1342, Luchino and Giovanni Visconti conquered the area, which brought Locarno back under the power of Milan.

The members of the upper class also owned small country houses with vineyards, which went up the hill behind Locarno as well as in Solduno and Cugnasco.

During the Middle Ages, the economy of Locarno and the whole region was closely linked with the nobles who owned the market, fishing, alpine and grazing rights and tithes.

In the early modern period, Locarno developed into a thriving commercial centre on an important road that linked the major cities of Lombardy, with German-speaking Switzerland and Germany.

The decoration of the church was financed, primarily, by the grain traders at the end of the 17th century, and the chapel frescoes are by Giuseppe Antonio Felice Orelli from 1742.

They owed their existence to the work of Giovanni Beccaria, several notables of the town (including Taddeo Duni) and religious refugees from Milan and Piedmont.

Following the collapse of the Helvetic Republic, the Act of Mediation, in 1803, created the Canton of Ticino with Locarno as an independent municipality.

The new municipality of Lucarno was no longer ruled by three different patriziati, which had emerged from the three groups (nobles, borghesi and terrieri), but until the mid-19th century there were institutions that reached back to the Ancien Régime.

The nobles corporation distributed its assets in 1866–67 to its members and dissolved the archive, but retained until about 1920, the fishing rights.

In the following decades, the growth rates were below those of other population centres of the canton, which, unlike Locarno, benefited directly from the Gotthard railway.

Since 1987, the only German language newspaper in Ticino, the Tessiner Zeitung, is published three times each week in Locarno.

The Sun can be found at the end of Via Gioacchino Respini where the cycle path, which runs alongside the river Maggia, starts.

Pluto, the final planet in the model, can be found 6 kilometres (4 miles) away from this starting point in the village of Tegna.

The founding of the sanctuary goes back to a vision of the Virgin Mary that the Franciscan brother Bartolomeo d'Ivrea experienced on the night of 14/15 August 1480.

Castello Visconteo, on the edge of the old town, was built in the 12th century, probably as the residence of a Captain Orelli, who remained true to the Emperor.

The professional program lasts three years and prepares a student for a job in engineering, nursing, computer science, business, tourism and similar fields.

Underground, there is a terminal for the Domodossola–Locarno railway, a metre gauge link to Italy operated in Switzerland by the Regional Bus and Rail Company of Ticino.

In 2018, the club filed for bankruptcy, which meant an automatic relegation to the ninth and lowest tier of Swiss football.