The Glacier Express to the Italian Lakes: Six Stops Through the Alps

Days 1-2: Zurich

You stay two nights at the Dolder Grand, which holds close to 100 pieces of art around the hotel. A private guide covers the old town on day one, along with a fondue lunch, and takes you past Küsnacht, the lakeside town a few minutes outside the city where Tina Turner lived for over two decades.

Day two is a trip to Lucerne, then the cable car up Mt Pilatus for the view over the Alps that locals will tell you is the best in the country, a claim more than one Swiss mountain makes, but Pilatus has the cable car to back it up, the steepest cogwheel railway in the world when the alternative route is running.

Days 3-4: Zermatt

A scenic train takes you to Zermatt, one of the more direct ways to see the Swiss countryside without driving. You stay at the Riffelalp Resort 2222m, a spa hotel built into the Zermatt ski area with direct slope access for most ability levels. Outside winter, the same trails work for hiking and biking.

Days 5-8: St Moritz

The Glacier Express covers the roughly 290 kilometers to St Moritz in about eight hours, crossing 291 bridges and 91 tunnels, including the Landwasser Viaduct, a curved stone bridge built in 1902 using a construction method that avoided conventional scaffolding across the valley below.

You stay at the Grace La Margna, opened in 2023, with a design-led feel that’s newer than most of the grand hotels in this part of Switzerland.

Days here can include a private hike in the Engadin mountains, the shops around town, and dinner at Ecco St Moritz. If your dates line up, White Turf, the horse racing held on the frozen lake each February, is worth building the trip around.

Days 8-10: Lugano

Lugano feels like the border between Switzerland and Italy as much as it is one, and Villa Principe Leopoldo, a former private estate turned hotel above the lake, is where you stay for two nights. The old town is close enough to explore on foot, and dinner one night is at Gallery Arté al Lago, a Michelin-starred restaurant built inside a contemporary art gallery on the lakefront.

Days 10-13: Lake Como

Three nights at Lake Como, either Villa D’Este, a 16th-century villa with a swimming pool that floats directly on the lake, or the Mandarin Oriental, smaller and more contemporary if you’d rather not stay somewhere quite so historic.

Villa D’Este also works better if you want one of its larger private villas for a group. A day trip covers Bellagio, long nicknamed the Pearl of Lake Como, with the funicular up to San Vito for the view down over the point where the lake splits into its two southern branches, and lunch built around Aperol spritz and truffle tagliatelle, both about as regional as lunch gets here.

Days 13-15: Lake Garda

Two nights at the Lafay Resort & Spa, with a private tour of the Rocca Scaligera in Sirmione, a moated 13th-century fortress with its own small harbor built into the walls, so boats could dock inside the castle rather than outside it.

From there, a visit to Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, the estate Gabriele D’Annunzio built for himself after the First World War, where he had an entire warship, the cruiser Puglia, hauled up from the coast and set into the hillside as part of the grounds, and where the open-air theatre still hosts performances today.

A private vineyard tour rounds out the stay, through the Bardolino and Lugana wine areas on opposite sides of the lake.