Why I Moved to Lugano as an Online Entrepreneur

Went remote 2.5 years ago, researched where to move to for 2 years, decided on Lugano.

Nicola Amadio

Nov 03, 2026

Hi friends!

In September, for the first time since I started this newsletter, I went almost 3 weeks without publishing an article.

The reason was…

That I was moving to Lugano, Switzerland 🇨🇭

And was dealing with all that came with it:

I’m writing this from a desk.

Not exactly breaking news. But for my first week in the new flat in Lugano 🇨🇭🌴 there was nowhere to sit: it was either standing or the floor. Then the couch arrived. After two weeks, two chairs for the bar table, and my first breakfast sitting on a chair. After ~2.5 weeks, a bit of home office.

If you have food on the table, and a chair, you’re extremely lucky. One week of eating on the floor is enough to learn that.

What the move cost me in the first month:

10k on furniture (and it wasn’t done yet)
2.5k on the gym
9 days of almost full-time “moving”, with minimal time to work on the business
Gym only once in those 9 days (usually I do sports every day)

This is what relocating to a new city in an unfurnished flat did to my work (the dark part is September):

Luckily, by mid October, we were back.

What I got:

Maybe one day without sun in the first 1.5 months ☀️ (Yes, it also rains here, about 100 days a year. More on that below.)
My first 10k CHF month: the highest revenue month since I started my business ~2.5 years ago, and also one of my lowest work output months (1 week of vacation in Italy, 2 weeks relocating). Having my best quarter ever in a Q3 means I should probably get my Italian citizenship revoked 😆

Mid October it became official: no more a Zurich bro, but a Lugano frate 🇨🇭

(Fun fact: the Zurich municipality site loads instantly, the Lugano one takes a minute 😁)

So this flat is the start of an experiment that I’ve been designing in public for about two years, on this newsletter and on X.

When I announced the move, I called it “a bit of an experiment, and partially a reversible choice”. I also promised to write about the background, the reasons, and the plan going forward.

Here it is. We’ll go through:

Why Switzerland stays
Why Zurich doesn’t
The places that almost won (Cyprus, Croatia, Valais, Italy, Poland)
The Lugano thesis, and the taxes
The new trifecta, and why Warsaw stays in it
What’s not great so far
One month in: Lugano vs Zurich, scored
Two months in: what surprised me
What would make me reverse it

Why Switzerland stays

My income is fully remote. I could move anywhere in the world, and I spent a lot of time checking.

Last year I wrote Why I still live in Switzerland. The short version still holds:

Low taxes, with an uncomplicated business structure. My company is here, and I never have to talk to my accountant.
A pension system where social security money is not lost.
Swiss citizenship: I’m about halfway there (5 of 10 years).

One more, that I used to underrate: the rules rarely change, and when they do, it’s often for the better. While I was researching this move, Ticino cut its corporate tax from about 19% to about 16%. In the same months, Croatia raised taxes on small sole proprietors, and Portugal’s famous regime for newcomers was already gone.

(As always: these are my working numbers for my own situation, not tax advice. I’m not a tax lawyer.)

The downside is the usual one: Switzerland is expensive. Pizzas (sometimes mid) cost $30+. I wrote before that the math works if you don’t spend all 12 months there, or if you earn a lot.

What changed in 2026 is the second part: first $10k month in July, first €10k month in August, first 10k CHF month in September. Revenues going up make Switzerland a bit more sustainable for me.

So Switzerland stays. The question was which city.

Why Zurich doesn’t

I spent most of my tech career in Zurich and I’m not here to trash it. On paper, I still kinda prefer Zurich:

Best airport in Europe, 30 minutes door to door
Amazing public transport
Forests you can reach in 5 minutes from your doorstep
A cooler and cleaner lake
4h direct train to Paris, with Alsace and Burgundy at less than 3 hours
The best healthcare in Switzerland
A great international food scene

I’m going to miss all of that. (That was before the move. One month in, I scored the two cities again, see below.)

But:

1. Too expensive 💸

As a five figure / low six figure earner, I can feel the real estate difference. Rent in Lugano is roughly 30% lower, and the market is sane: any flat you apply to, you get a reply in <24h. In Zurich, you’re one of the 100 candidates applying in the first 12 hours, and these days it’s almost impossible to get a flat at a reasonable price if you’re not a full-time employee at a corporation (ideally a Swiss citizen).

2. The language 🇮🇹

Mother tongue Italian simplifies a lot over the mid/long term: healthcare, admin, community, street life.

My German was decent once, but Swiss German is a different thing, and half of Zurich speaks English anyway. And you can’t really integrate in a place if you don’t speak the local language, IMO.

I also lived 5 years in Milan, and the Lombard ethos isn’t far off from the Ticino one.

(There’s also a bit of vibe breaking when you’re having a Euro-maxxed coffee in Zurich and you start hearing “JA JA, genau so”. Can’t argue against that 😁)

3. The “Zurich trap” 🪤

I came up with the term in 2024. If you don’t have a family, Zurich is boring AF, unless you like hanging out in the mountains and already have a partner. If you do have a family, it’s much better, but also extremely expensive.

After a couple of years there I was genuinely bored, and I started doing long weekend trips to other places instead of going out in Zurich (same cost, much more fun).

4. The sun ☀️

Lugano gets about 2,230 hours of sunshine a year. Zurich about 1,700. (I ranked a few cities here.)

5. The food 🍅

Swiss supermarket quality is subpar compared to what I get ordering from Wolt in Warsaw. It’s not even close. From Lugano, Italian produce is around the corner.

6. Family and day 1 friends

My hometown on the Adriatic is about 8 hours by train from Zurich. From Lugano it’s 5 to 6.

And two things that made Zurich hard to leave turned out to be portable:

Healthcare: with Swiss health insurance you can go to doctors anywhere in Switzerland. Zurich’s top tier clinics are just 2 hours of train away, for the occasions when I need them.
Zurich itself: same 2 hours.

The places that almost won

I spent more time than anyone in Europe figuring out where to move to with an online income, and had lots of backs and forths.

One example: in December 2025 I posted “It’s Lugano bull time for me”. The day after: “Here’s why I might stay in Zurich after all”. (The reason was sublets, explained here.)

In between, I seriously considered five alternatives. Here’s why each one lost.

1. Limassol, Cyprus 🇨🇾

Honestly, Limassol was quite dope: excellent food scene, friendly people, international, beautiful sea, low taxes, oysters delivery on Wolt (!!!). Then the US/Israel vs Iran war broke out while I was on the island, and I ended up in an evacuated airport because of a drone. Beyond that: it’s not mainland Europe, it’s not my mother tongue, and there’s no Swiss passport at the end of it. Full story here.

2. Split, Croatia 🇭🇷

The one that still seduces me. If we’re being honest, Split could CRUSH Lugano on day-to-day enjoyment: you already live on the sea (not “3h to the beach”), the islands are part of the lifestyle, it’s bigger and it’s cheaper. The real tradeoffs: private schools and the Croatian language for future kids, a small and mostly seasonal airport, no 1M+ city nearby, and Balkan countries aren’t always reliable when it comes to stability. We need to take a loss somewhere. Can’t have it all 😁 (I visited in March.)

3. Sion, Valais 🇨🇭

For a while, my top 3 was Croatia, Lugano and Sion: one of the sunniest cities in Switzerland, surrounded by vineyards, with cheaper health insurance. I got so excited about its tiny airport that I posted about it, and the day after I had to post a correction: the flights cost around 400 CHF one way. The real fork was the language. Valais is very based, but maybe not based enough for me to learn French to a C1 level. In Lugano, I already speak it. (Full Sion vs Lugano comparison here.)

4. Just Italy 🇮🇹

“Why don’t you just go back to Italy?” One thing is for sure: living full-time in Italy is not an option for me. High taxes (unless you’re small enough for the flat-tax regime), bureaucracy, a Ponzi scheme pension system, not very safe, and it’s not where the high-paying tech careers are. If only you could live in a better run country, safe and with more nature, and then in 1 hour reach Milan for fun weekend getaways. If only. You don’t need to marry Italy. You can just hang. More on this below, because it’s the whole point of Lugano.

5. Warsaw, full time 🇵🇱

I think Warsaw is one of the best cities in the world right now, and I seriously considered setting up there. But Poland is Russia’s enemy number one, part of my business is coaching, which would fall under Polish VAT (23%), public hospitals and infrastructure are good but not Swiss, and Polish is not an easy language to learn. If the “Russian threat” tames itself, I’ll reconsider. Until then, I’ll continue to hang out there as a visitor and fan.

If I hadn’t done Lugano, today I’d consider Pozuelo (Madrid), Croatia or Limassol.

At this point I analyse cities and countries kind of as a hobby. Or as work, if you count Remote GOATs 😄

The Lugano thesis 🇨🇭🌴

In July, I wrote it down like this:

Base in top-tier Switzerland
No cap gains, 16% CIT, semi-private pension system
Low PIT if either <100k salary or if you have 2+ kids
Much more affordable real estate than Zurich/Zug
Sunny, Italian lifestyle, beautiful downtown, cute lake, plenty of nature
Italian riviera, Tuscany, the Adriatic, the Dolomites: all at a few hours drive or train
1h to Malpensa airport, with flights to everywhere in the world
The largest supply of specialised doctors in Europe, at affordable rates, largely clustered in northern Italy, at <2h from Lugano
Milan at 1h, with some of Europe’s best shopping, dining, and culture

(CIT = corporate income tax, PIT = personal income tax.)

The idea behind it: Italy has plenty of problems, some of them not small, and structural. But those same problems keep prices contained. If you reside in Switzerland and go private for what you need in Italy, you’re largely protected from them, and you get good value for your money.

Maybe Italy is not “BACK”. But it’s back enough to hang.

In three lines:

Earn online
Reside in Switzerland
Play in Italy

The data I collect on Euro Top Tech points the same way: high earners in Italy are happier than high earners in Switzerland, but people in Switzerland are happier with their tax-paid services than people in Italy. So: Swiss taxes and infrastructure, and Italy for the weekends.

When I got the flat in August, I summed up Ticino like this:

Lombardy without maranzas
Italy without Ponzi scheme pension systems
Trentino but with Swiss administration and infrastructure
Alps but Mediterranean
Peaceful but 1h to Milan
Swiss beef but Italian fruits and veggies
Swiss autonomy but easy access to EU market

And when I explained why Lugano and not Limassol, the list got more personal:

I can talk to doctors, accountants and school teachers in my mother tongue
1h30m from a negroni sbagliato in the bar they invented it
Close to family and day 1 friends
AC Milan, Club Dogo, Italian media/music/fashion
Sunniest spot in Switzerland
Swiss citizenship

The location

Insane, tbh:

Lake Como: 45 minutes
Milan: 1h to 1h30m
Skiing in Andermatt: 1h to 2h
Piedmont and the Langhe: 2h
Zurich: 2h
The beach in Liguria: 3h
Marche/Abruzzo (my hometown): 5h
Sardinia: 1h flight from Milan

Bonus: the majority of these are reachable by both car and train.

How I plan to use it

Groceries. The plan is to build a sourcing routine that is as independent from Coop/Migros as possible: smaller shops and markets with good produce, maybe from Italy, or directly shopping in Italy (Varese, Milan). Swiss beef, Italian fruits and veggies.

Healthcare. A split: Swiss hospitals for major and serious issues (in exchange for what I called “scam healthcare costs”), plus nearby Lombardy, with its huge network of private healthcare professionals, for consultations, checks and short therapies.

Milan. For me, Lugano also means “often in Milan”. The Saturday version: 1h15m train, breakfast, hang out in the city, a nice lunch for 50 euros per person, meet some friends, maybe a museum, then back to Lugano for dinner.

The taxes, in simple terms

I posted the details here. Tl;dr: around 10-15% total, if you’re an online entrepreneur.

CIT: 15-16%, depending on the municipality
PIT: 6-12%, if you pay yourself a salary under 100k (or 150-200k with a family: a spouse and kids lower the PIT)
Social security: mandatory, but at these salary levels it’s not lost money, you get a good pension back
Health insurance: around 7k a year per adult, 4-5k if you’re younger, 10-15k a year for a family of 3 with a young kid
Wealth tax: if you’re worth less than 8 figures, it doesn’t matter. Above that, a flat 0.45%.

The basic strategy everyone uses in Switzerland: the company bills the clients, you subtract as many costs as you can from profits, you pay yourself a small salary to cover living costs, some dividends every now and then, and you reinvest the retained profits within the company.

Not 0 tax (almost nowhere is), but also not more than 15% all included. In return you get direct democracy, no corruption, great infra, safety, great banking, top tier nature, great healthcare, geopolitical stability and high quality public schools.

Lugano is also not the lowest-tax place, in the world or in Switzerland. The people for whom the absolute lowest tax matters more than culture, lifestyle and weather usually go to Zug, Schwyz, the Lucerne area, or the UAE. I have friends in all those places, but I think they also attract people who can be more transactional and materialistic than I tend to like.

One note for the engineers reading this

All of the above works because my income is online.

If your income depends on a local tech job, the map looks different: in Switzerland, those jobs are in Zurich, not in Ticino. Lugano has almost 0 tech scene.

Which, for me, is a feature. In my last 2 years in Zurich, almost everyone I knew was either in tech or in adjacent corporate/startup fields, and the last thing I want after I’m done with work is to go to a tech or startup event. I don’t miss the “tech/AI startup energy” a single bit. If anything, it’s a relief.

What you find here instead: crypto, fintech and AI people with an anti-Silicon-Valley spirit, small business owners (agencies, real estate, IRL businesses), and various successful Italian-lifestyle aficionados. High signal, not high volume: if you need high stimulation, it’s not it. But it’s also not a networking desert.

In October I visited “Sovereign Valley”: a hub in the centre of the city, where companies working on on-premise / open-source AI and bitcoin sit, perfectly integrated in the piazza life. The Prem AI office has nothing to envy to the big tech offices I’ve worked at, and the coworking space next to it (very good chairs, monitors, bitcoin events) is a short walk from my flat. An advantage of Lugano being small: it’s easy and quick to just move around by foot.

The new trifecta

In March, I codified my setup as a Swiss-based Euro-trifecta: a stable, low-tax base + a big city + a Mediterranean spot for Euro-summer. Back then it was Zurich, Warsaw, and my hometown on the Adriatic.

A couple of weeks after the move: new trifecta unlocked.

Lugano base 🇨🇭🌴☀️
Warsaw in spring / early summer 🇵🇱🌇
September holiday in the Med 🌊
(When feeling fancy, winter holiday overseas)

What each one is for:

1. Lugano: the base. Stable, high quality, low taxes, central location. It’s where the routine is: work, gym, cooking, lake, wine.

2. Warsaw: the big city. Big city energy, safe, buzzing.

3. The Mediterranean: Euro summer without the mass tourism. It used to mean my hometown in high season. Now it means September, when the sea is still warm: Italy, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Albania.

“So Milan replaces Warsaw?”

Most likely not. I wrote it in December, and again when I announced the move.

Milan has a bit more vibes, architecture, weather and food. Warsaw has more energy and much more safety. All in all, for me Warsaw is still the better big city to spend time in.

I tested it on the first weekend of October, with a city break to Milan. Had a blast. But compared to Warsaw, it ain’t flattering for Milan: streets are almost spotless in Warsaw and often a bit run-down in Milan, parks and pedestrian roads are much cleaner, and safety doesn’t even compare. Milan is arguably the best-run, most meritocratic city in Italy, and it still shows how much it could be, if only it were run properly.

So: Milan for the occasional Saturday, Warsaw for a longer stay in spring. From Zurich it was a 2h flight. From Lugano I need to add the train to Malpensa. Still fine.

This is not a digital nomad circuit

I think most bifecta/trifecta setups don’t work well if you:

have kids
aren’t worth 7+ figures while earning 7+ figures yearly
value peace and stability
don’t do these things for a living

(I do these things for a living. That’s my excuse.)

It’s also why a place like Switzerland is appealing: you live in one spot, but can easily visit nearby interesting places, and you have good airports for the rest.

I’m not trying to run three homes. Lugano is a base for 30+ year olds, and it works for day-to-day life and routine. Then you have Milan nearby for big city vibes, Italy and France for weekend trips, and a few weeks a year in a very big city if you feel like it (this winter: a month in Tokyo).

After kids

Already war-gamed in March: the trifecta becomes a bifecta. Lower complexity, better for kids, easier for schools. Main base + summer base.

For that phase, Lugano is still my favourite: kids would learn Italian and could talk to my family, public schools, Milan and its airports nearby, the Alps and the Mediterranean within reach.

But I might reassess when the time comes. Maybe even Schwyz, or the Zurich area 👀

What’s not great so far

“Stop romanticising Lugano, it’s just a city.”

Fair. Here are the downsides, two months in.

1. Too many cars 🚗

Public transport kinda sucks, and it’s just buses. Traffic, air pollution, poor walking experience outside of the city centre. Add the ~60k frontalieri who drive into Ticino from Italy every day: as many as Lugano has residents.

Leaving the amazing Zurich public transport was always going to be one of the major drawbacks. And in Lugano you need a car, unlike in 90% of Switzerland.

I don’t have a driving license (yet).

2. Running from the door 🏃

Went jogging in Lugano in October. Was it worse than running in Zurich? IMO: a bit, yes.

In Zurich you can be in the forest within walking distance from your home, from most hoods (Enge, Wiedikon, Oerlikon, Wallisellen). In Lugano, there aren’t really forests in the city. I took a short bus up to a nearby hill: you can run there, but it means running for ~10 minutes through quite a bit of traffic first. Running by the lake ain’t too great either, ‘cause of the cars. The other green spots seem both quite small and peripheral.

In Lugano you can’t easily have both: good access to the centre and proper nature nearby. If you live in the suburbs it gets easier, but that means a car to get into town. For now I prefer the central areas. Long term, the “Lugano meta” is probably living in the suburbs and having a car.

Update from last weekend: I might have figured out where to go for nice runs. The best I’ve found so far for nature + flat terrain near town is the Lago di Muzzano.

3. It’s a small town

60k people. I wrote it already last December: if you stay there too long, it can become restrictive and uninspiring. That’s why Milan, and that’s why the trifecta.

If you want day-to-day big city life, Lugano can’t give you that. The hardcore mitigation would be renting a cheap spot in Milan too, and spending 100-150 nights a year there.

4. Prices are Swiss 💸

The best produce shop in Lugano sells tomatoes at 3-7x what I’d pay in my hometown, and 2-3x Milan. At the supermarket chains, a bio product costs 50-100% more than in Italy, and sometimes tastes worse, because it’s imported. Health insurance runs 400 to 700 a month per person, and has been rising ~5% a year.

Restaurants too: the other night I paid 170 euros for a dinner for 2 in a regular restaurant in Lugano. But in 1h you’re in Milan, where 120 euros for 2 gets you some really incredible shit.

Rent is the exception: about 20% more than Milan, about 30% less than Zurich, and similar to Split, Warsaw or Limassol.

Within Switzerland, you also pay more for less: some of the higher taxes, the heftiest health insurance, middle of the pack healthcare, and some of the worse infra in the country (still good by global standards). In May I wrote that this “doesn’t sit well with me”. It still doesn’t. The cheaper housing more than makes up for it, but it’s a real cost.

All in all, I don’t think prices are that high for what you get. And the Italian border is 30 minutes away for the rest.

5. No sublets

In Zurich, it’s straightforward to sublet your flat when you’re abroad. In Ticino, landlords are more old school. This is what made me step back from Lugano last December, and it hasn’t gone away. What changed is on my side: revenue.

6. The italianity of the situation 🇮🇹

The flat hunt was significantly easier than in the Zurich area: very little competition, lots of supply (apparently they built a lot of real estate around Lugano, waiting for a growth that never came).

It was also more Italian. Less complicated, but also less flawless.

Example: the owner scheduled our video call for a Monday at 9:30. At 9:30 on Monday, I was the one pinging them. The call got rescheduled to 13:30.

Both a feature and a bug.

7. The wine shops 🍷

Couldn’t find a good wine shop in Lugano, so I became a wine shop in Lugano.

8. A city for 30-50 year olds (and retirees)

Is Lugano a “city for old people”? My physiotherapist, who lived here for a while, told me that “if you’re 25, probably it’s not the best place”. In my gym (one of the fancier in town), maybe 20-50% of the customers are retirees. Warsaw is definitely the youngest and most vibrant of the three cities I spend time in.

I’m 32. I started partying at 15, did it for a good 7-8 years, then mildly until 30, and now I’m the unc who’d rather go out for dinner or some live music than go crazy on a night out. I find enough people in my age range here, and it’s not really an issue for me atm. My girlfriend is 25 and suffers it a bit more, for example when half of her yoga class is twice her age.

In a later stage of life, e.g. when starting a family, Lugano might become quite optimal. Which is one of the reasons I chose it, while looking for a long-term solution.

9. Everything I haven’t seen yet

I’ve only lived here for two months. Summer crowds, mosquitos, a properly rainy month: all still to come.

One month in: Lugano vs Zurich, scored

One month after the move, I scored the two cities on nine things:

Urbanism and transport: Zurich. Much fewer cars per capita, more pedestrian friendly, and a public transport network that mogs everyone, EU included.
Architecture and beauty: Lugano, slight edge. Cute Italian-style villas and walking paths, mountains right on the lake, more piazza life in the streets (vs the mechanical grind on Zurich streets).
Vibes and people: Lugano, slight edge. Italian-vibed with Swiss restraint: relaxed, welcoming and warm, yet not loud. Zurich is efficient, ambitious and Germanic. Everything works and standards are high, but its ambition comes across a bit nerdy, and the city got crowded in the past few years.
Housing: Lugano. Higher quality in Zurich, significantly cheaper and more available here. Better housing, more easily, with the same budget.
Nature: Zurich. Forests on every corner.
Going out: Zurich. More to do.
Location: Lugano. 1h20m to Milan, 1 to 3 hours to most of central and northern Italy. Being 1 hour from Italy instead of 3 or 4 makes you feel much less “stuck in Switzerland”.
Taxes and cost of living: tie. At the end of the day, kinda the same.
Weather: Lugano. Sunnier, more humid.

Lugano 5, Zurich 3, one tie.

Three days later, I had to correct myself. I had deeply underestimated Ticino on two of the three Zurich wins:

Nature. Lugano has lots of it too, as long as you move a couple of km from the city. Lush and wild (around the lake it’s all green, no houses, unlike Zurich lake), and you can hike basically from the lake. Andermatt at 1-2h, St. Moritz at under 3h with a direct and scenic bus. And hiking in Ticino is much more wild and playful than in central Switzerland. Food up there is better too.
Going out. It’s cheaper than Zurich: apero for two at a good wine bar 50 CHF instead of 70, cake and coffee 25 instead of 30-35.

If that holds, it’s 7-1. Call it Ticino supremacy, if you will.

Two months in: what surprised me

Lugano has been way better than I expected so far. It’s been a great surprise. A few random examples:

1. Service levels. I thought everyone would be an asleep Italian (I’m Italian, so I can offend Italians). It’s kinda true but also not true: in the end, people fix stuff if it’s broken, relatively quick.

2. Service levels, part 2. I thought: Lugano is 1/10th the size of Zurich, Zurich already has meh options, Lugano is gonna be worse. Not true. The wine bar costs less, and I like it more than in Zurich. The hairdresser costs half, and I like it more than in Zurich (and Warsaw). My girlfriend tried like 5 pilates and yoga spots in Zurich and they all sucked; here she tried 2, and one she really likes. And you can kind of find everything, delicacy-type stuff: great pastries, all kinds of Spanish hams and seafood, niche Italian vegetables.

3. The weather is incredible. Sunny almost all the time, with seasons. Humid, so you “smell” them: autumn air and all. Since I arrived in September it’s been mostly sunny, with only a few days of rain. The thing is that when it rains, it really pours. But then that cleans the sky and the air, so it ain’t bad.

I also don’t think “in the sun” is such a big flex in the global warming age: Cyprus and the south of Spain and Italy are uncomfortably hot for a good 1-4 months a year. I’d much rather take sunny and fresh Lugano, with 4 real seasons and different things to do over the year. (Dubai bros could never. Nothing more broke than having money without being able to afford seasons.)

4. Nature. Not worse than Zurich, as long as you don’t need it from your door (see above). Quite picturesque, somehow it reminds me of US-like nature.

5. Vibes and people. Maybe it’s because the local language is my mother tongue, but people are much friendlier. If I go to a place I like, soon thereafter I know the owners by name, the next time they remember me, and they’re open to share and do things beyond work. You can always chit chat with people on the street, and people have a smile on their face instead of looking like they’re in pain and need to take it out on you. In Zurich I made good friends too, but things in this sense moved way slower. Zurich sometimes gives you the impression that kids are born inside the city version of Deloitte. I’m exaggerating, of course. A bit.

6. Transport. Inside the city it’s buses and cars. But across Ticino it’s actually very good, and much more affordable than Zurich: a 2-10 euro ticket gets you almost anywhere in Ticino, whereas in Zurich a 7 euro ticket only gets you to the suburbs.

7. Italy is one of the most enjoyable places on earth. And here it’s just around the corner.

All in all, both me and my girlfriend are very happy about Lugano so far. Have to give it to her tbh: I was always a bit “suspicious” of it, as an Italian who “escaped” Italy. But she had a strong feeling we’d like it here more than in Zurich, and turns out she was very right (at least so far). Women intuition, very underrated sometimes.

What would make me reverse it

I called this a partially reversible choice, so I should say what would reverse it:

Milan stops being enjoyable. If going there for the weekend means constantly watching my surroundings, the “play in Italy” part of the thesis breaks.
The cars, the traffic and the air bother me more than I expect.
Kids change the math. In my working model, the all-in rate for a family is ~20% in a place like Lugano and 10-15% in German-speaking Switzerland (counting as “tax” the part of social security that has a low return; again, not tax advice). If taxes and schools win, German Switzerland is back on the table.
Income drops. My back-of-the-envelope threshold for a family with 1 or 2 kids in Switzerland is ~$150k before taxes as a couple. With less than 100k of remote business income, I’m not sure Switzerland is worth it.

The nice thing is that even the bad scenario is a soft one. I called it the CAN’T LOSE theory of Lugano:

If money stays good: stay. Low taxes, Italian language and way of life, Swiss infra and admin, and occasionally tap into Italy for weekends and vacations.
If money goes down: pass the border and set up in Italy under the flat-tax regime (forfettario), with a lower cost of living. Same language, same way of life, and I wouldn’t start from scratch, because I’d already know my way around.

So, is Lugano the best city in Europe?

No.

Split is more fun. Zurich works better. Warsaw has more energy. Limassol has better food delivery.

I did post that Lugano is the ultimate base for online earning individuals and families, and two months in I stand by it. Base is the key word: it’s not a big city, it’s not the lowest-tax place, and it has almost no tech scene.

But for someone with an online income, Italian as a mother tongue, family on the Adriatic and no kids yet, it’s the one Swiss base where Milan is 1 hour away, home is 5 hours away, and all the admin happens in my own language.

Two months in, it’s an insanely enjoyable place to live. Maybe the first time where being native Italian turned out to be an asset: the way it unlocks experiencing life here with little to no limitations. (Aging played a role too, as well as being in a long-term relationship. But I genuinely think it’s one of the best cities in Switzerland, if not the best.)

I’ve only seen it for two months, most of them sunny.

I’ll report back after the first winter, and after the first Warsaw spring from the new base. If you’d rather watch than read, here’s a little video thread from Lugano.

What do you think? Would you have picked something else?

Let me know in the comments, or by replying to this email!

Nic

The European Engineer

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