Lumino

Lumino is a municipality in the district of Bellinzona in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland.

[3] The convenient location at the entrance to the Val Mesolcina and the ancient fortifications in the neighborhood indicate that there was an early settlement.

The assets of the Bishop of Como in Lumino were given to Capitanei of Locarno in the 12th century.

The border between Lumino and the Graubünden village of San Vittore was finalized, after centuries of dispute, in 1776.

During construction of the new roadway over the San Bernardino Pass in 1818, the cantonal authorities forbade the inhabitants of Lumino from making improvements on the road between the Moesa bridge and the border with Graubünden.

In the last decades of the 20th century, the construction of many new houses (in 2000, 73% of the working population worked outside the municipality) and the resettlement of a small but thriving industry changed the village from a small farming village.

[3] Lumino has an area, as of 1997[update], of 9.95 square kilometers (3.84 sq mi).

The arms of the municipality are those of the architect Marco Mades, a citizen of Lumino, who became famous for his works of art in Rome.

Most of the population (as of 2000[update]) speaks Italian(90.3%), with German being second most common ( 4.4%) and Albanian being third ( 1.8%).

[7] The age distribution, as of 2009[update], in Lumino is; 145 children or 11.1% of the population are between 0 and 9 years old and 123 teenagers or 9.4% are between 10 and 19.

[8] The historical population is given in the following table:[3] In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the FDP which received 33.39% of the vote.

In the federal election, a total of 497 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 58.3%.

[13] In the 2007[update] Gran Consiglio election, there were a total of 873 registered voters in Lumino, of which 651 or 74.6% voted.

[8] There were 506 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 37.4% of the workforce.

[16] From the 2000 census[update], 923 or 81.9% were Roman Catholic, while 42 or 3.7% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church.

In the lower secondary school system, students either attend a two-year middle school followed by a two-year pre-apprenticeship or they attend a four-year program to prepare for higher education.

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

Aerial view (1953)