Bernina Express From Tirano: the Whole Chain From Lake Como

The Rhaetian Railway states that its Albula and Bernina lines have been a UNESCO World Heritage site since July 2008, and describes the Bernina Express route as crossing 196 bridges and passing through 55 tunnels, taking in the Landwasser Viaduct and the Bernina Pass on its way from Chur down to Tirano in Italy. St. Moritz is the alternative starting point, and the run from there to Tirano is the short version, about 2 hours 15 against about four hours from Chur.

What makes it a product rather than a train is the reservation. RhB states that a seat reservation is required for the Bernina Express and that a travel ticket is required separately from the reservation supplement. That is the sentence most planning articles skip, and it is the reason people arrive at Tirano with a Swiss rail pass and no seat.

The line runs on metre gauge, into the street

One structural oddity worth knowing before you arrive. Tirano has two railway stations side by side: the Italian state railway station and a separate Rhaetian Railway station, catalogued by Wikidata as two distinct entities. The Swiss metre-gauge track leaves that second station and runs at street level through Tirano itself before it starts climbing.

You do not change cities to change countries, you change platforms.

What RhB does not publish

A great deal, for a railway this famous. On the pages we read in Q3 2026 there is no departure time from Tirano, no timetable, no fare table, no reservation supplement, no first and second-class split, no group rate against a base fare, and no altitude for the Bernina Pass summit. What there is: a last-minute offer from CHF 87.00, a CHF 5.00 reservation on the regional trains, a note that groups of ten or more save 30 per cent, and a diversion via Vereina between 29 October and 13 November 2026 for engineering works.

Everything else sits inside a booking engine, which means no honest guide can print a Bernina Express price.

The line is Milano Centrale to Lecco to Sondrio to Tirano, and it calls at Varenna-Esino-Perledo, Bellano and Colico on the way. So a traveller in Varenna is already standing on the right railway. What Trenord will not do is tell you what the journey costs.

Its fares are a kilometre band rather than a route price, it has no route page for Varenna to Tirano or Colico to Tirano, every URL form for those pairs returns a 404, and none of them appears in its own 61-route index. Because the operator publishes no distance for the pair, no band can honestly be applied to it either.

What that means in practice

It means you buy the Italian leg in the booking engine or at the station on the day, and you accept that no published figure exists to check it against. The one thing that is certain is the shape of the day: you are riding a regional train up the Valtellina, changing to a metre-gauge Swiss railway in Tirano, riding it over a 2,000-metre pass and doing all of it again in reverse. From Varenna that is a very long day.

From Bellagio or the western shore it starts with a boat, which makes it longer still, and the boat timetable finishes earlier than the railway does.

The Trenord rules that apply on the Italian leg

The same ones as any regional journey in Lombardy, and worth knowing because this is a long day with an early start. Digital tickets no longer require validation and activate themselves. A rail ticket is valid 6 hours, or 4 hours cross-border.

Buying on board costs €4.50 plus the ticket unless the station had no open sales channel within 350 metres. Travelling without a valid ticket is €47 if you settle within 5 days and €162 by injunction. The Milan day trip page covers the ticketing regime in full, because it is the same railway.

The Rhaetian Railway runs ordinary regional trains between St. Moritz and Tirano over exactly the same metals, past exactly the same viaducts and over exactly the same pass. On its own reservations page it offers a seat on those regional trains for CHF 5.00 per person, states plainly that this is not the Bernina Express, and adds that you can still make the journey without making a reservation, with longer waits possible at busy times.

Which we would book

The regional train, on a first visit from Lake Como, and without much hesitation. The scenery is the attraction and it is identical; the panoramic glazing is a comfort rather than a view; and the windows on the ordinary carriages open, which matters more than it sounds if you intend to photograph anything. The Bernina Express earns its premium for travellers making the full Chur run as the centrepiece of a Swiss trip, not for somebody squeezing a Swiss day out of an Italian lake.

If you do want the branded train, the last-minute offer is the only published price on RhB's site: from CHF 87.00 per person, second class, ticket and reservation together, bookable from six days before departure at the earliest, on selected trains, and neither exchangeable nor refundable. That combination of cheap and inflexible suits somebody already on the lake watching the forecast, which is more of you than it sounds.

The date to avoid

RhB publishes one operational note on the Bernina Express page: a diversion via Vereina from 29 October to 13 November 2026 because of engineering works. It states no other seasonal closure. If your trip falls in that fortnight, check what the diversion does to your specific train before you buy a non-refundable last-minute seat.

Treat this as a 12-hour day at absolute minimum and plan nothing else into it.

• Very early. Train from Varenna-Esino-Perledo up the Valtellina to Tirano. Trenord states no journey time and no fare for this pair, so buy in the app the night before and read the departure board rather than a guide.
• Mid morning, Tirano. Walk from the Italian station to the Rhaetian Railway station beside it. This is where the reservation you booked weeks ago either exists or does not.
• Late morning to early afternoon. Tirano to St. Moritz, about 2 h 15, over the Bernina Pass. This is the whole reason for the day.
• Early afternoon, St. Moritz. Enough time for a walk and a coffee at Swiss prices, and not much else. Remember the CHF 150 per person per day tax-free allowance if the shops tempt you.
• Mid afternoon. Back down the same line. The return is the part that gets cut when a connection slips, so give it more slack than feels necessary.
• Evening. Train back down the Valtellina to Varenna. If your bed is across the water in Bellagio or Menaggio, check the last crossing before you commit to any of the above, because the boats stop long before the trains do.

This is the day the packaged version genuinely improves. The 13-hour Milan departure exists precisely because the chain has four moving parts and two of them are unpriced, and paying somebody to own that risk is a defensible decision rather than a lazy one. Our own preference is still the independent version, with the regional train and a night in the Valtellina rather than a return in the dark, but we would not argue with anybody who books the coach.

If a twelve-hour day is more than you want to give up, what is open when on Lake Como has the shorter options.

On a stay of five days or more, from Varenna, Bellano or Colico, yes. It is the single best thing you can do off this lake and one of the great railway journeys anywhere: a metre-gauge line climbing to an alpine pass without a rack, a UNESCO inscription earned on engineering rather than scenery, and a descent into an Italian valley at the end of it.

On a stay of three or four days, no, and not because of the train. A 12-hour day out of a three-day holiday is a third of the trip, and the lake in three days already has no slack in it. Repeat visitors, longer stays and anyone who came for trains rather than water are the audience here.

And if you are based on the western shore, think twice regardless. Every version of this day from Menaggio or Tremezzo starts with a boat, and boat timings are the first thing to break. The eastern shore is where this trip is easy, which is one more argument for reading where to stay before you book a bed rather than after. The guide to the lake puts the shores side by side.