Bergamo airport is 50 kilometres from Milan and has never had a train. That single fact is why a €19 Ryanair fare into “Milan Bergamo” can end up costing more in time and money than a €60 flight into Linate, and why the coach queue outside arrivals at 07:00 on a Saturday is the most miserable sight in Lombardy aviation.
It is not a bad airport. Around 17 million passengers used it in 2025, it is being substantially rebuilt, and the terminal that emerges from that work will be a genuinely pleasant place to fly from. But it is an airport in Bergamo, serving Bergamo, that happens to sell itself to Milan.
Getting from Bergamo airport to Milan means a coach, almost certainly: the shuttle buses to Milano Centrale cost around €10, take 50 to 60 minutes, and run frequently from directly outside arrivals. The cheaper alternative is local bus 1 into Bergamo city, then a regional train to Milan — roughly €5.50 plus €2.40 and 70 to 90 minutes in total. A taxi is €110 to €130 and rarely worth it. A direct airport railway station has been under construction for years and, at the time of writing, is not yet open — check before you travel, because when it does open it changes this entire article.
The coach: what almost everyone should take
Several operators run the Orio al Serio–Milano Centrale route and they compete on essentially nothing except departure time. The main names you will see are Orioshuttle, Terravision, Flibco and Autostradale. The buses leave from a rank immediately outside the terminal, run every twenty to thirty minutes through the day, and take 50 to 60 minutes to reach the coach bays on the eastern flank of Milano Centrale.
- Price: around €10 one way, a little less if you book online in advance. The operators charge broadly the same; the differences are marketing.
- Frequency: every 20–30 minutes daytime, thinning overnight but with departures timed around the late arrivals bank.
- Journey time: 50–60 minutes, longer in Friday evening traffic on the A4.
- Luggage: hold space, included. This is the coach’s real advantage over any train.
Buy from the operator’s own site or app rather than a reseller. Tickets are usually flexible enough that you can take an earlier or later bus with the same operator, but that varies — check before you assume it, particularly if your flight lands early.
The Centrale drop-off, and why it matters
All the main coaches terminate at Piazza Luigi di Savoia, on the east side of Milano Centrale. That is a genuinely good arrival point if you are staying nearby or catching an onward train, and a mediocre one if you are heading for the Duomo, because you then need the metro anyway — another €2.20 and ten minutes. Our Milan metro guide covers that last leg, and the hotels near Milano Centrale guide is worth a look if you would rather not do it at all.
The cheap way: local bus plus regional train
If you are counting euros rather than minutes, there is a route that halves the cost. Take ATB bus 1 from outside the terminal into Bergamo, get off at the railway station, and take a Trenord regional train to Milano Centrale or Milano Porta Garibaldi.
- Bus 1: around €2.40, roughly 15 minutes to Bergamo station, running very frequently.
- Train Bergamo–Milan: around €5.50, 50 to 60 minutes depending on whether you catch a fast or a stopping service.
- Total: roughly €8 and 70 to 90 minutes door to door, including the change.
The saving is about two euros, which is not the point. The point is that this route is more resilient than the coach: trains are unaffected by motorway traffic, they run to a published timetable, and if you miss one another comes. On a Friday evening when the A4 is solid, the train can genuinely be faster than the bus despite the extra change.
The catch is luggage. Regional trains have limited racks and a rush-hour Bergamo–Milan service is a commuter train, not an airport train. With two large cases this is an unpleasant journey. With a cabin bag it is the smart choice.
Turning the transfer into a day out
Here is the one piece of advice that most Bergamo arrivals never consider: Bergamo is a beautiful city and you are already in it. The Città Alta — the walled upper town, reached by funicular — is one of the loveliest places in northern Italy and about twenty minutes from the airport door. If you have an afternoon to burn before a hotel check-in, or a long gap before an evening departure, leaving your bags at Bergamo station and going up the hill is a far better use of the time than sitting in a terminal. Our Bergamo day trip from Milan guide covers what to see and how the funicular works.
Taxis, transfers and hire cars
A taxi from Orio al Serio to central Milan runs roughly €110 to €130 on the meter — there is no fixed rate as there is at Malpensa. For four people that is not absurd, but it is rarely the right answer given a €10 coach covering the same ground in similar time. Where it earns its money is a late arrival, a young family, or a hotel awkward for both Centrale and the metro. Our guide to taxis and ride-sharing in Milan covers which apps operate here.
Pre-booked private transfers price similarly and are worth it mainly for the certainty of a driver waiting. Car hire is available at the terminal and makes sense only if you are driving somewhere other than Milan — the city is ringed by the Area C congestion charge at €7.50 a day and the wider Area B low-emission zone, both camera-enforced, with fines from roughly €80 to €335 arriving at your home address months later. See our renting a car in Milan guide before you book one.
The railway that keeps not opening
This deserves a section of its own because it is the most consequential thing about Bergamo airport and the most misreported.
A rail link of roughly five kilometres has been under construction to connect Bergamo’s main station to a new four-platform station at the airport terminal, reached by a pedestrian tunnel into arrivals. The investment runs to well over €200 million, part-financed through Italy’s PNRR recovery plan. When it opens, the promise is around ten minutes from Bergamo city centre and roughly an hour from Milano Centrale, with up to two direct services an hour from Milan and something in the order of eighty daily connections.
That would transform this airport. It would also make most of the advice above obsolete.
It is not open yet. The project has been described as due for completion “in time for the 2026 Winter Olympics” and at “the start of 2026”, and neither happened. I am not going to give you a date, because every date given so far has moved, and a confident wrong date is worse than an honest “check”. Before you travel, look at the airport’s own website or the Trenord site. If there is a train, take the train. If there is not, take the coach.
The terminal itself
Bergamo has been rebuilding for several years and the changes are substantial: a departures floor of around 7,500 square metres, a check-in hall expanded by 4,300 square metres with 64 self check-in positions, and 27 gates split 16 Schengen to 11 non-Schengen.
The most useful upgrade for passengers is 14 security lanes with next-generation scanners, which means liquids up to two litres can stay in your bag along with laptops. Where those lanes are in use, security here is dramatically faster than it used to be. Rules can vary by lane and by day, so watch the signage rather than assuming.
How early to arrive
- Hand luggage, Schengen: two hours. The terminal is single-level and compact, but the peak Ryanair banks are genuinely busy.
- With a bag to drop: two and a half hours.
- Early morning, roughly 05:00–08:00: take the upper figure and add the coach’s own unreliability on top.
Work backwards carefully from the Milan end. A 07:00 departure means being at the airport by 05:00, which means a coach from Centrale at about 03:45 — and services at that hour are thin. This is the scenario in which Bergamo’s cheap fare quietly costs you a night’s sleep or a hotel room.
Late landings and pre-dawn departures are covered properly in our guide to arriving in Milan late at night.
Onward from Bergamo: the lakes, Brescia and the mountains
The case for Orio al Serio improves enormously the moment Milan stops being your destination. It sits on the eastern side of Lombardy, which is the wrong side for Milan and the right side for almost everything else worth reaching.
- Lake Iseo — the underrated one, and the closest lake to the airport. Train from Bergamo station towards Brescia, change for the branch line.
- Lake Garda — direct coaches run to Sirmione, Desenzano and Peschiera in season, and trains via Brescia run all year.
- Brescia — under an hour by train from Bergamo, and a considerably better city than its reputation.
- The Alps — the Bergamo valleys and, in winter, the ski resorts of the Orobie start almost at the airport gates.
Lake Como is the awkward one. It sits west of Milan while Bergamo sits east, so the journey means crossing the whole metropolitan area — usually a train into Milan and another out again, at two and a half to three hours. If Como is your destination, fly into Malpensa; the routes are compared in our Milan to Lake Como transport guide.
Coach operators compared
The four main operators are functionally interchangeable and the honest advice is to book whichever leaves closest to your landing time. The differences worth knowing:
- Orioshuttle — the highest frequency and the one most likely to have a bus waiting whenever you emerge.
- Terravision — heavily marketed in the terminal and often the cheapest online, with the least flexible tickets.
- Autostradale — the incumbent Italian operator, sometimes with additional stops beyond Centrale.
- Flibco — usually competitive, occasionally with a much better advance fare.
Two practical notes. First, all of them sell a return, and the return is worth buying only if your outbound time is genuinely fixed — an unused half is not usually refundable. Second, ignore anyone selling tickets on the terminal concourse who is not at an operator’s own desk; buy from the machine, the desk or the app.
Is Bergamo worth the saving? An honest answer
Do the full sum, not the headline one. A return through Bergamo adds roughly €20 in coach fares and about two and a half hours of your life compared with landing at Linate, and rather less compared with Malpensa. If the flight is €80 cheaper, take it without hesitation. If it is €25 cheaper, you are working for about ten euros an hour.
Two further considerations tilt it. If you are travelling to Bergamo, Brescia, Lake Iseo or Lake Garda rather than Milan itself, Orio al Serio is simply the right airport and the whole comparison collapses. And if your flight lands after about 22:00 or leaves before about 07:00, the transfer becomes the dominant cost and the savings usually evaporate.
The full three-way comparison sits in our Milan airports guide, with the mode-by-mode costs in Milan airport transfers. For what it is worth, my order of preference is Linate, then Malpensa, then Bergamo — and I still fly into Bergamo several times a year, because the fares are what they are.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get from Bergamo airport to Milan?
Take a shuttle coach from directly outside arrivals to Milano Centrale — around €10, 50 to 60 minutes, departures every 20 to 30 minutes. The cheaper alternative is ATB bus 1 to Bergamo station followed by a regional train, at roughly €8 and 70 to 90 minutes.
Is there a train from Bergamo airport to Milan?
Not directly, not yet. A dedicated airport railway station has been under construction for years and is not open at the time of writing. Until it is, the only rail option runs via Bergamo’s city-centre station. Check the airport’s own site before you travel, because this is the one fact here most likely to change.
How far is Bergamo airport from Milan?
About 50 kilometres east-northeast of the city centre. It is genuinely closer to Bergamo, three and a half miles away, than to Milan.
How much is a taxi from Bergamo airport to Milan?
Roughly €110 to €130 on the meter. There is no flat rate on this route, unlike Malpensa’s fixed €110.
Do the coaches run at night?
Services thin out overnight but are timed around late arrivals and very early departures. They do not run continuously, so if your flight lands after midnight, check the last departure before you land rather than after.
Can I leave luggage at Bergamo airport?
There are storage options at the airport and in Bergamo city, but tariffs change — check the current rate on arrival rather than budgeting from an old figure.
Final thoughts
Bergamo works if you go in with clear eyes. Book the coach, know which operator you are with, allow an hour for the transfer plus a metro leg at the far end, and never plan a tight connection around it. Do that and it is an entirely reasonable way into Lombardy for the price of a sandwich.
What you should not do is treat it as a Milan airport in any meaningful sense, or build an early-morning departure around a transfer that has to work first time. And do check the railway before you travel — the day it opens, Bergamo goes from Milan’s awkward third airport to a genuinely competitive one. Once you are in the city, our Milan travel tips pick up from there.