The opening of the south: the railway and Ticino's economy

Bellinzona: from capital to railway town

The railway changed the economic geography of Ticino within a generation, and Bellinzona felt the change first. The town had become the permanent capital of the canton in 1878, after decades in which the seat of government rotated among Bellinzona, Locarno and Lugano (Chapter C.I). The cantonal administration compensated it for the loss of its old role in the transit trade of the Gotthard road, which the railway made obsolete.¹ The Gotthardbahn made Bellinzona its main operating centre south of the Alps. The first small repair shop of 1874 was followed between 1886 and 1890 by a large workshop for the maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock on a site of more than 80,000 square metres.² The workshops employed 140 workers in 1882 and 757 in 1909.³ When the large workshop opened, the whole metal and machinery sector of Ticino counted only 1,026 workers, so that the railway concentrated about a third of the canton's industrial employment in that sector in one place.⁴

Bellinzona grew accordingly. Its population rose from 4,036 in 1880 to 10,406 in 1910, partly through immigration and partly through the incorporation of neighbouring municipalities. New enterprises appeared around the station, including the Bonzanigo brewery (1878), hat factories, printing works and pharmaceutical producers, and at the beginning of the twentieth century the town had three credit institutions and several insurance agencies.⁵ The railway workers formed the core of an organized labour movement in a canton that had known little industry. The workshops went on strike in 1901 over layoffs. In 1918 their workers took part in the general strike, which in Ticino was supported only by the railwaymen, the metalworkers of Bodio and the stonemasons, and a workers' commission represented the staff from 1900 to 1950.⁶ In March 2008 the workers of the Officine struck again against the restructuring plans of SBB Cargo. Their resistance, supported by the town and the canton, led to an agreement with the Federal Railways and to a cantonal popular initiative, "Giù le mani dalle Officine", that collected nearly 15,000 signatures and was put to the vote in May 2019, while the Federal Railways planned a new workshop at Castione.⁷

Chiasso: customs, forwarding and the first banks

At the southern end of the line the railway turned a village into a frontier town. Chiasso had 1,265 inhabitants in 1850, 3,700 in 1900 and 5,722 in 1910.⁸ Every goods train between Switzerland and Italy by the Gotthard route had to stop at Chiasso for customs clearance, and the town became the place where goods changed jurisdiction, where duties were paid or secured and where consignments were reloaded, stored or redirected. Forwarding houses (case di spedizione) and customs agents settled there in numbers, and the commercial activity of the border expanded with them. Tobacco and silk manufactures developed in the town in the nineteenth century, and from 1925 a free port (punto franco) allowed goods to be stored without customs clearance.

The forwarding business required credit. The agent who cleared goods for an importer often advanced the duties, freight and storage charges and recovered them from the consignee, and he needed a bank that would finance these advances and handle payments in francs and lire. The first banks and bank branches in Chiasso grew out of this commercial function before they became, after the Second World War, the destination of Italian cash deposits that Chapter D.II describes. The emigration agencies also moved with the railway. Before 1882 they had been concentrated in Locarno, from which emigrants left by lake steamer and carriage for Genoa and Le Havre. After the opening of the Gotthard they spread along the line "from Chiasso to Bodio, passing through Lugano, Giubiasco and Bellinzona".⁹ Chiasso thus combined three of the functions that later defined the Ticinese financial sector: customs and trade finance, payments with Italy and the handling of the savings of emigrants and frontier workers.

Notes

1. HLS, art. "Bellinzona" (as above): Bellinzona became the definitive cantonal capital in 1878. See Chapter C.I. ↩
2. Tobia Bernardi, FPC 63 – Officina di Bellinzona, archival description (ISAD(G)), Fondazione Pellegrini Canevascini, September 2015, https://www.fpct.ch/documenti/FPC63_Officine_FFS_Bellinzona.pdf. ↩
3. HLS, art. "Bellinzona" (as above). ↩
4. Bernardi (as above). ↩
5. HLS, art. "Bellinzona" (as above). ↩
6. Bernardi (as above), on the strike of 1901 caused by "una diminuzione dell'offerta di lavoro e dai conseguenti licenziamenti", the participation of the railwaymen in the general strike of 1918 and the records of the Commissione operaia (1900–1950). ↩
7. RSI, Millevoci, "Giù le mani dall'Officina", 6 May 2019, https://www.rsi.ch/rete-uno/programmi/intrattenimento/millevoci/Gi%C3%B9-le-mani-dall %E2%80%99Officina--1450112.html, for the strike from 7 March 2008, the initiative with nearly 15,000 signatures, the vote of 19 May 2019 and the Castione project. ↩
8. HLS, art. "Chiasso" (as above), for the population figures, the station, the "case di spedizione", the tobacco and silk manufactures and the free zone from 1925. ↩
9. Giorgio Cheda, "Appunti per una storia dell'emigrazione ticinese oltremare", Scuola ticinese no. 102, https://www4.ti.ch/fileadmin/DECS/DS/Rivista_scuola_ticinese/ST_n.102/ ST_102_Cheda_appunti_per_storia_emigrazione_ticinese_oltremare.pdf: "Chiasso a Bodio, passando attraverso Lugano, Giubiasco e Bellinzona". The author's name follows the file name of the online edition. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of October 2026.