Home › Political & Historical › Enclaves, Exclaves & Border Oddities
Campione d'Italia
An Italian lakeside town inside Switzerland, famous for its casino
Campione d'Italia is a sliver of Italy on the shore of Lake Lugano, entirely surrounded by the Swiss canton of Ticino. For decades it lived a double life: Italian in law, Swiss in practice, with Swiss francs in every till, Swiss phone lines, Swiss license plates, and a Swiss postal code. Its fortune came from its casino, opened during the First World War so that diplomats and spies could gamble beyond Swiss restrictions, and later one of the largest gaming houses in Europe. When the casino went bankrupt in 2018, the town's finances collapsed with it, and in 2020 Campione was folded into the EU customs area, ending part of its Swiss-style existence.
Campione covers about 2.7 square kilometers on the eastern shore of Lake Lugano, facing the city of Lugano across the water. Steep wooded slopes of Monte Sighignola rise behind the town, and at its nearest point the Italian border lies only about a kilometer away across the mountain, but the drive to Italy proper runs through Swiss territory. About 1,850 people lived there in 2026. The town is part of the Italian province of Como. Its waterfront is dominated by the modern casino building by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, completed in 2007 and reopened in 2022. Since 2020 Italian customs and VAT rules apply, though at Swiss-aligned rates, the euro is the legal currency, while many residents still earn and spend francs, and Italian post has replaced the Swiss service.
In 777 a local lord left Campione to the Archbishop of Milan, and it passed to the abbey of Sant'Ambrogio, which held it for a thousand years. When the surrounding lands of Ticino went to the Swiss in 1512, the abbey kept Campione. In 1798, as Ticino joined the Swiss Helvetic Republic, Campione's residents chose to stay with Lombardy, and later swap proposals came to nothing. The town added "d'Italia" to its name in 1933 to underline its identity. The casino, founded in 1917, became its economic engine until its 2018 bankruptcy left hundreds unemployed. On 1 January 2020, over the objections of many residents, Campione joined the EU customs territory, and its Swiss-era privileges have been gradually unwound since then.