European Experience

Lugano, Switzerland. A Center of International Experience.

Swiss Alps. Glacial lakes. Mediterranean climate. An Italian flavor. An international population. This is the city we call home: Lugano, Switzerland. On the map, Lugano is the central point of departure for all of Europe and it is central to the experience of being a Franklin student.

Situated on Lake Lugano, one of the spectacular lakes linking Switzerland and Italy, Lugano is a place where cultures meet, overlap and intermingle. The city is the cultural, recreational, financial and commercial hub of Switzerland’s southernmost, Italian-speaking canton of Ticino. A location offering stunning natural beauty and an ideal climate. A location appropriately referred to as the Swiss Riviera.

Lugano is fun, sophisticated and safe. There are two concert halls in the city, great museums such as the Cantonal Museum of Art and Architecture and Museum of Modern Art, and every variety of shop and restaurant. There are limitless outdoor activities both on and alongside Lake Lugano, including 40 of Europe’s best mountain bike routes. The International Jazz Festival, Blues to Bop and other renowned events attract visitors from all over Europe. As a result, French, German and English are likely to be heard on the streets, in addition to the city’s native Italian.

In Lugano, students have been known to hike, catch an art exhibit and attend the symphony in the same day while practicing a few languages in the process. For our students, Lugano truly is the center of it all.

Your European Experience.

Franklin College is a twenty-minute walk from the heart of Lugano, where rail and airlines connect students with all of Europe. Many Franklin students find that their educational experience is as much about what they experience from living in Europe with its diverse cities, cultures, languages and history, as it is the knowledge they gain in the classroom.

Only an hour’s travel from Lugano is Milan, the commercial center of northern Italy, where students have a wealth of opportunities to expand upon the learning they garner in class. In addition to being both a financial and fashion capital, Milan is home to some of the world’s finest artistic treasures, including da Vinci’s “Last Supper” and Michelangelo’s “Pietà Rondanini” as well as works by Tintoretto, Raphael and other masters. Of particular interest is the Duomo, the city’s magnificent gothic cathedral, as well as the nearby Galleria, a 19th century engineering marvel, and the world’s greatest opera house, La Scala.

Beyond Milan, a few additional hours of travel expands our students’ radius of discovery to cities such as Venice, Florence, Strasbourg, Nice, and Innsbruck. In one day, students easily travel as far as Munich, Vienna, Paris and Rome, not to mention what is possible to experience and learn in the course of a weekend. With Lugano’s rail lines and regional airport, all of Europe is within easy reach.

Find out how Franklin students enhance their international learning experience through independent travel.

Why Switzerland?

The country of Switzerland is an excellent location for students of the world, and contributes largely to the international experience that is education at Franklin College. Jonathan Steinberg, Cambridge University historian and member of Franklin's Board of Trustees, states the following in Why Switzerland? “Switzerland is a useful place to look at European problems. It is small enough to be studied conveniently, odd enough to be an abbreviation for the whole of European life and advanced enough to be fully integrated into all the trends. In looking at the way the Swiss cope with mass culture, modern transportation, technological change, inflation, urbanization, population growth, secularization, environmental pollution and violence by extremist groups, we can see in a small arena what faces Europe in the large one.”

Reflecting and contributing to many of the continent’s trends, Switzerland is a microcosm of Europe and the ideal setting for Franklin College. Within this environment, Lugano serves as the center of our students’ daily lives, and the center of their European experience.

Lugano, Switzerland. Center of international experience. The city we call home.