Three days in Lugano: where Switzerland gives up and becomes Italian
Two nights on a lake below the Alps, with palm trees on the promenade, a Luini fresco in town and three medieval castles twenty-five minutes up the line at Bellinzona.
- Length
- 3 days, 2 nights
- Where you stay
- Lugano
- Places
- 6 across 3 days
South of the Gotthard the country changes completely. The signs are in Italian, lunch takes two hours, the buildings have shutters and loggias instead of shingles, and yet the trains still leave to the minute and the prices are still Swiss. Ticino is the only canton that runs entirely in Italian, and Lugano is its city.
It sits on a fjord-shaped lake between two steep wooded hills, each with a funicular up it, with a small arcaded centre that opens onto a square facing the water. Palms grow on the promenade. In October you can be swimming here while it snows in Zurich, two hours away through the mountain.
The trip has three parts: the town, the lake, and a day at Bellinzona, where three castles and a wall built to close off the whole valley have been standing since the middle ages.
Highlights
- The boat down the lake to a car-free village of stepped alleys under the eastern mountain
- Bellinzona's three castles, joined by ramparts that once sealed the valley end to end
- A Crucifixion by Bernardino Luini that fills an entire church wall, and costs nothing to see
- Arcades, loggias and a lakefront square where the town drinks its evening aperitivo
- Two funiculars up two hills, each with a different half of the lake below it
Where to stay
Lugano, two nights
Stay near the lake rather than up by the station. The centre is a small grid of arcaded streets behind Piazza della Riforma, and everything in this trip except Bellinzona starts within ten minutes of it.
The town is smaller than its reputation suggests, and quiet at night. What it has is the setting: two mountains, a long lake with the Italian border partway down it, and light that stays warm well into the autumn.
Day by day
Day 1 in Lugano
Down the lake to Gandria, and dinner on the water
Leave the bags and get on a boat. Gandria is twenty minutes down the eastern shore, under the mountain: a village of stepped alleys and vaulted passages stacked on the slope, with no road into it and consequently no cars, where every corner opens onto the water.
There is nothing to see in the museum sense. You walk the lanes, look at the boats, and then sit on a terrace over the lake and eat. The restaurants here face west, which means the light on the water through dinner is the reason people come.
Take the last boat back, or walk home along the olive path that runs from the village to the end of the Lugano promenade, an hour on a level lakeside track with panels explaining the olive terraces you are walking through.
- 13:00
Arrive at Lugano railway station
TravelThe station is above the town. Take the funicular down to the centre rather than the stairs, especially with luggage.
- 16:00
Gandria
OtherA car-free village of narrow stepped lanes on the mountainside, twenty minutes by boat from the centre.
- 18:30
Ristorante Antico
EatItalian cooking on a terrace above the water in Gandria. Book if you want the front row, and check the last boat before you order coffee.
With more time: With more time, the customs museum further along the shore is only reachable by boat and is stranger and funnier than it sounds, being a museum of smuggling on a smuggling route.
Day 2 in Lugano
The three castles of Bellinzona
Bellinzona is under half an hour up the line, and it exists because the valley narrows here: whoever held this spot held the road to the passes. The result is three castles on three levels and a fortified wall that once ran right across the floor of the valley, all of it a world heritage site.
Start at Castelgrande, which sits on the crag in the middle of town. A lift runs up through the rock from the square below, which saves the climb, and the courtyards and the long wall walk give you the town and the mountains behind it. Then take the path up to Montebello, the prettiest of the three, thirteenth century in origin, with a small archaeological museum in the keep.
If the legs are willing, keep going up to Sasso Corbaro, 462 metres above the valley and thrown up in six months in 1479 when Bellinzona thought it was about to be attacked. It is the plainest castle and the best view. A bus runs up if you would rather not walk, and there are places to eat back in the old town before the train.
- 10:00
Castelgrande
HistoricThe lowest and largest of the three, standing on a crag in the town centre, with a lift running up inside it from the square.
- 12:30
Castello di Montebello
HistoricThe photogenic one: thirteenth-century walls restored in the 1970s, with an archaeological museum inside the keep.
- 14:30
Castello di Sasso Corbaro
HistoricThe highest castle, built in six months in 1479, 462 metres up. Walk the path or take the bus, and go for the view rather than the rooms.
With more time: With more time, Bellinzona holds a Saturday market through the old town that is one of the best in the country, so a Saturday is a good day to take this trip.
Day 3 in Lugano
Luini's fresco, the arcades, a coffee before the train
Walk west along the front to Santa Maria degli Angioli. It is a plain church attached to a former monastery, and inside, filling the whole wall that separates nave from choir, is Bernardino Luini's Crucifixion, painted in the 1500s and one of the great Renaissance paintings north of the Alps. It costs nothing to see and takes as long as you want to stand there.
Then walk back into the old town, which is a compact grid of arcaded streets and small squares that opens out onto Piazza della Riforma, the town's front room. Shops here are Italian rather than Swiss, and the produce halls are worth a look even if you are not buying.
Finish with a coffee at the grand café on the arcade, which has been there long enough to have been the place where everybody in this town met everybody else, then take the funicular back up to the station.
- 09:30
Chiesa di Santa Maria degli Angioli
ReligiousA monastery church on the lakefront with a full-wall sixteenth-century fresco of the Crucifixion by Bernardino Luini. Free.
- 10:45
Centro Storico
VisitThe arcaded lanes and squares behind the lakefront, best walked before the shops shut for lunch.
- 12:15
Grand Café Al Porto
EatThe old café under the arcades near the port: coffee, a pastry and a last look at the square.
- 13:30
Train from Lugano railway station
TravelAbout an hour and a quarter to Milan, a little over two hours to Zurich through the Gotthard base tunnel.
With more time: With a later train, the funicular up the western hill takes twelve minutes and puts you on a summit terrace with the whole lake, the Alps and, on a clear day, the plain of Lombardy.
Before you go
Getting in and getting around
Lugano is on the Gotthard line, which now runs through a base tunnel: Zurich is a little over two hours away, Milan around seventy-five minutes. The town's own airport stopped scheduled flights in 2021, so if you are flying, use Milan Malpensa, an hour away by shuttle bus.
The centre is walkable and largely pedestrian, but the hill between the lakefront and the railway station is steep enough that a funicular exists to solve it. Use it if you have bags.
Boats are the good way to see the lake, and they call at villages you cannot drive to. Buy a day ticket if you plan more than one crossing.
Money, language and lunch
Ticino is Switzerland and takes francs at Swiss prices, but the food is Lombard: polenta, risotto, lake fish, and the grotto, a stone-built country tavern serving a short menu under a pergola. Eat in one if you get the chance.
Italian is the working language. German and French speakers get by; English is common in hotels and patchy elsewhere. Anything you know in Italian will be used.
When to go
April to October. This is the warmest corner of Switzerland, with a genuinely Mediterranean feel by May, and the lake is swimmable from June. Spring brings camellias, autumn brings chestnuts and the grotto menus that go with them.
Winter is mild by Swiss standards but grey, and half the boats and both funiculars run reduced timetables or shut.
Lugano is the reward for going through the mountain instead of stopping in front of it. Two hours south of Zurich the weather changes, the language changes, the food changes, and you end up eating lake fish under a pergola while the trains keep running exactly as they do at home.
It also puts you on the doorstep of Italy: Como and Milan are both within an easy morning, so this works as the last stop of a Swiss trip or the first of an Italian one.
Or make it a longer trip
These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- How many days do you need in Lugano?
- Two nights covers the town, one lake trip and a day at Bellinzona, which is the shape most people want. Add a third night if you intend to walk in the hills or cross the border to Como, which is about an hour away.
- Is Lugano actually Italian?
- It is Swiss, and has been since the sixteenth century, but the language, the food and the architecture are Lombard. Practically speaking that means Italian menus, Swiss prices, Italian opening hours and Swiss trains, which is a good combination.
- Is Bellinzona worth a day?
- Yes. Three castles on one hillside, joined by walls you can walk, is unusual anywhere and unique in Switzerland, and the town below them is a working Ticinese market town rather than a resort. It is twenty-five minutes by train and the castles are all within a walk of each other.
- When can you swim in Lake Lugano?
- June to September comfortably, and often into October. The town has lidos on both sides of the bay, and the villages down the lake have small stone beaches, but the water is deep and cold a short way out.