![Protestant families from Locarno fleeing across Lake Zurich, panel painting from the 17th century.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/orelli-duni-titelbild-300x225.jpg)
The Protestants of Locarno
It’s often forgotten that Locarno was a hotspot of confessional strife. The Locarnese Protestants and their subsequent expulsion in 1555 precipitated significant comment and a high degree of interconfessional distrust among the Swiss Confederates.
![The transalpine territories of the Old Swiss Confederacy.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/ennetbirgische-vogteien-297x300.jpg)
![Church and former monastery of San Francesco in Locarno.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/kirche-und-ehemaliges-kloster-san-francesco-in-locarno-300x225.jpg)
![Konrad Pelikan, anonymous, 1590-1600.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/konrad-pelikan-178x300.jpg)
The number of believers is increasing day by day, even though the Antichrist does not cease through his false teachers to oppress those whom he knows to have pure and faithful opinions of Christ.
![The Second Peace of Kappel of 1531, which shaped the confessional map of the Confederation.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/landfriede-280x300.jpg)
![The reformer Beccaria at the disputation in Locarno, 1549. Etching from 1835.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/beccaria-disput-259x300.jpg)
![First letter from Taddeo Duno to Heinrich Bullinger dated August 9, 1549.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/duno-an-bullinger-213x300.jpg)
The church is God’s vineyard.
![](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/02-orelli-tafeln-bebie-pebbia-228x300.jpg)
![](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/05-orelli-tafeln-muralti-223x300.jpg)
Panel paintings from the 17th century tell of the events leading up to the emigration of the Protestant families from Locarno to Zurich. Private archive of the von Orelli family / Photo: Archive of the von Muralt family in Zurich
![The exodus of the Protestant families from Locarno in 1555, depicted with their coats of arms.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/1555-auszug-aus-locarno-300x174.jpg)
![The Muraltengut in Zurich once belonged to the politician and industrialist Hans Conrad von Muralt.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/muraltengut-in-zurich-baz-011586-300x205.jpg)
![The Orell Füssli bookshop goes back to a Protestant printing company in which the Orelli family, later Germanized as Orell, had a stake.](https://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/app/uploads/orell-fussli-hof-baz-020139-300x202.jpg)