Monte Verità (Italian; German 'Berg Wahrheit', meaning "Mount Truth" or "Mountain of Truth") is a hill standing 321 metres above sea level (1053 feet) and a cultural-historical ensemble in the Swiss canton of Ticino. The site is located in the municipality of Ascona, about half a kilometre (500 yards) north-west of the old town. Situated on Lake Maggiore, Monte Verità was a well-known meeting place for life-reformers (Lebensreformer), pacifists, artists, writers, and supporters of various alternative movements in the first decades of the 20th century. After 1940, the place lost its importance. An attempt at a revival in the late 1970s met with very limited success.

Monte Verità was originally the name of the local "Nature Healing Sanctuary Sun Sanatorium" (in German: Naturheilstätte Sonnen-Kuranstalt) established on the hill Monte Monescia. This name first appeared in a brochure published in 1902. Shortly afterwards, the sanatorium settlement was renamed "Sanatorium Monte Verità". In the period that followed, the name Monte Verità was also transferred to the entire hill, which was formerly known as Monte Monescia.

A whole series of foreign intellectuals who had their temporary or permanent residence around Lake Maggiore in the 19th century belonged to the prehistory of the Monte Verità settlement project. The area around Locarno was then a haven for political rebels, including various Russian anarchists. Among them was Mikhail Bakunin, who had moved to Ticino in November 1869. Bakunin first lived in Locarno and later bought a villa in Minusio, which became a refuge for revolutionaries who were wanted on arrest warrants.

The Russian-born Baroness Antoinette de Saint Léger [de] acted as a great hostess to many well-known artists and writers. The Brissago Islands, which she had owned since 1885, was the site of great festivals; they are within sight of Ascona. Around 1889, the politician and theosophist Alfredo Pioda [de], together with Franz Hartmann and Countess Constance Wachtmeister, developed a plan to build a theosophical monastery called "Fraternitas" on Monte Monescia. Presumably, the German life-reformer Karl Max Engelmann, who had settled in Monte Brè, was a candidate for this never-built monastery. Engelmann belonged to the "Pythagorean League" around the nature-philosopher preacher Johannes Friedrich Guttzeit [de] and was running a vegetarian guesthouse.

In November 1900, Engelmann met the Gräser brothers and probably drew their attention to the property on Monte Monescia that had already been purchased by Alfredo Pioda [de]. At that time, the hill was a vineyard threatened by phylloxera infestation, and shepherds and goatherds grazed their herds on the bare hilltop. Henri Oedenkoven [de] and Ida Hofmann [de] followed the Gräser brothers' proposal to acquire this site as a settlement.

The actual story of the alternative settlement project began as early as 1899 in Bled (at that time belonging to Austria-Hungary, today in Slovenia). It was there that the music teacher Ida Hofmann [de], who had grown up in Transylvania, and the Belgian industrialist's son Henri Oedenkoven [de] met during a stay at the Arnold Rikli natural healing sanatorium. Both were unknown to each other until then but developed a strong sympathy for each other in the few weeks of their common cure therapy. They were joined by Karl Gräser [de], an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army who was also taking a cure therapy from the heliopath ("Sun Doctor") Arnold Rikli and intended to resign as soon as possible from his army post. Karl's views were influenced by his brother Gustav Gräser, an artist who had been wandering for a year. The three Gräser brothers Karl, Ernst, and Gustav went together on a hike from Bled to Florence. The aspiring painter Ernst Gräser [de] later also lived temporarily on "Monte Verità" and lured fellow students such as Willi Baumeister, Oskar Schlemmer, and Johannes Itten to the closely related colony in Amden on Walensee.

An intensive exchange of letters developed between Oedenkoven and Hofmann, which led to a meeting in Munich in October 1900. In addition to the initiators Oedenkoven and Hofmann, the brothers Karl and Gustav "Gusto" Gräser attended this meeting, as well as Ida Hofmann's sister Jenny, a trained opera singer, the teacher Lotte Hattemer, and her friend Ferdinand Brune from Graz, a theosophically influenced son of a landowner. After "Oedenkoven's plan" of the founding of a so-called "vegetable cooperative" had been presented, the decision was made that "each individual's movable property [...] should be contributed to the founding of a natural healing institute [...]". The main part of the expected profit would go back to the project, and the rest of the profit would be distributed among the members. If a member, for whatever reason, intends to leave the project community at a later date, the paid-in capital should be returned to him as soon as "it is liquidated". It was also decided that the cooperative should be founded on the shore of one of the northern Italian lakes and that, in order to find the right place, they wanted to set off immediately – on foot.

There were already models for the Monte Verità settlement project. This included, among others, the Oranienburg "Eden Cooperative Fruit Growing Colony" (Eden Gemeinnützige Obstbau-Siedlung). The direct precursor was the artist community around the German painter and life-reformer Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach (1851–1913) at the "Himmelhof" near Vienna. Gustav Gräser had been his student there in 1898 and also conveyed Diefenbach's views to his brothers Karl and Ernst Gräser.