Swiss Customs Museum

This museum cannot be reached by roads. The yellow building sits on the edge of Lake Lugano just meters from the Italian border, accessible only by boat from Lugano or the nearby village of Gandria. Today it houses the Swiss Customs Museum, but it began life as a remote border post where guards were stationed to stop contraband crossing the Switzerland-Italy frontier. Life here was austere: no electricity, no running water, and no roads – isolation was part of the job.

The post existed because of economics. While Italy imposed protective tariffs beginning in the 1870s, Switzerland largely embraced free trade. The price differences created an irresistible black market. In 1897, one kilogram of sugar cost about 0.6 lira in Switzerland but 1.5 lira in Italy. Coffee sold for 3.5 lira on one side of the border and 5.5 on the other. For struggling farming communities along the lake, smuggling coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and food became a reliable secondary income.

The smugglers were inventive. Between 1868 and 1894, roughly a quarter to a third of Ticino’s tobacco production was smuggled across the border. Some hollowed out cheese wheels to hide tobacco. Others trained dogs to carry contraband in specially designed harnesses. Many wore soft fabric shoes called peduli so they could move silently through forests at night.

The most unusual attempt surfaced in November 1948, when Italian border guards discovered a homemade submarine just offshore near Porto Ceresio. Built from timber and encased in metal, the vessel measured only three meters long and could carry about 450 kilograms of cargo. Inside, a single operator sat in a cramped cockpit pedaling like a bicycle, turning a propeller at the stern. The cargo it was meant to transport: salami.

The submarine likely never made a crossing – smugglers couldn’t even get it into the water.

Today the pedal-powered submarine sits inside this museum you can only reach by boat, evidence that an invisible line in a lake was once worth building submarines for cured meat