Visiting Castelgrande in Bellinzona
A family of four is traveling from Luzern to Milan Malpensa airport soon, planning to explore Bellinzona and its Castle Grande during a layover. They are curious about the best way to get to the castle with a stroller and how much time to set aside for visiting the castle with kids.
- Castle Grande is about a 10-minute walk from the train station, but you can take bus number 4 to Montebello castle for a quicker route.
- The Swiss Travel Pass covers the route from Lucerne to Bellinzona, so you can travel without extra fare.
- Visiting time can vary, so be flexible with your schedule when visiting with kids.
AI-generated summary-
Hi everyone
We are a family of four travelling to Milan Malpensa airport from Luzern at the end of this month. We plan to take the Gothard panorama route with Treno Gottardo. On the way back we were planning to switch trains at Bellizona and spend a few hours exploring Castle Grande. We plan to use Luggage storage at the station and visit the castle with children one of whom is a infant with stroller.
Is there a bus service to reach the castle or it can be reached on foot?
What amount of time is needed to explore it with kids if we visit the museum too?
Thankyou
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Hello Ranjeetoo4,
That’s wonderful you will be visiting Bellinzona!
Here are some useful links for your visit to Bellinzona and storing luggage at the train station.
Typically most arrive by foot to Castelgrande as it is quite close to the train station. There is the Artu mini train tour to all three of the castles as an option if you did not want to walk too much? More information on the mini train tour can be found at the Ticino Tourism Office.
Just a note, access to the outer grounds of each castle is stroller friendly but within the castles and museums themselves, there are only stairs. Castelgrande does have lifts to the castle grounds though. As a tip, you may want to bring your infant carrier as a backup?
How long for the visit, this is very personal. Also with children, visits anywhere, can either be a very short or very long, especially if a child becomes completely fascinated with something 😉
I hope this helps, feel free to reach out with any further questions.
Kind regards,
Yolanda
Hi Yolanda
Thankyou very much for a detailed reply.
We are planning to travel on last day of the month of March. We have a couple of hours to spend between our trains at Bellizona on that day. We would be arriving by Treno Gottardo and leave towards Malpensa airport where we have a overnight flight to catch back to our home country.
The castles being UNESCO world heritage sites we had planned them into our trip and wanted to have atleast quick glimpse before leaving Switzerland.
The Bellinzona castles are fabulous (and very unusual) – well worth even a short look.
The entrance to Castelgrande is about 10 minutes walk from the exit of Bellinzona station. However, the view is more scenic from Montebello castle, which is above the railway (the railway actually tunnels beneath it!) . Bus number 4 will take you from the station to the entrance to Montebello castle (bus journey time 2 minutes)
Thank you all for the replies
I am also considering taking a Eurocity train(attachment) to Bellizona in case there are some undue delays and we couldn’t take the Treno Gottardo earlier that day.
Will this route from Luzerne to Bellinzona be included in my Swiss Travel Pass?
And as Seat reservations are mandatory [R] in this train, how to reserve seats in this train?
Several points:
1) If you want time in Bellinzona, I recommend taking the fast train anyway
2) Please remember that the Treno Gottardo goes over the old Gotthard railway. It has become know as a ‘mountain railway’ but in fact is the old main line route. It was replaced as the main inter city route for a very good reason – the old route is slow.
3) the fast base tunnel route has fast inter city trains every 2 hours direct from Luzern. At all other times the same route is available with a cross-same-platform connection at Arth Goldau, so you can take the base tunnel route every 30 minutes throughout the day.
4) R in the timetable means reservation possible, not reservation obligatory. Reservation is not obligatory (or needed really in most cases) on inter city trains
5) you can see the pattern of the timetable in the official timetable PDF here:
http://www.fahrplanfelder.ch/fileadmin/fap_pdf_fields/2023/600.pdf
Hello Ranjeet004,
Yes, your route from Lucerne to Bellinzona would be covered by the Swiss Travel Pass. Here is the coverage map so you can what is also included 🙂
As mentioned reservations are not obligatory (only on some specific scenic train routes, and not on your route). Of course, should want to, you can. For example, in your attachment you can see that on this particular date and time, this route is quite busy as the little men are ‘red’. This indicates they are expecting high occupancy.
I hope this helps.
Kind regards,
Yolanda
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