The Most Beautiful Crater Lakes in the World

20 places in 11 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Crater Lake

   United States42.944° N 122.107° W

   

   Roughly 7,700 years ago, the volcano Mount Mazama did not just erupt — it collapsed. A catastrophic eruption blew out enough magma to empty the mountain's internal plumbing, and the whole summit caved in on itself, leaving the basin that filled to become Crater Lake. Ash from that eruption has been found as far away as Canada, making it one of the largest eruptions on Earth in the last 10,000 years. The Klamath people, whose ancestors witnessed it, preserved the event for millennia in an oral tradition describing a battle between the Chief of the Below World and the Chief of the Above World — very likely the oldest continuously told account of a specific natural disaster anywhere in North America.

   Did you know? At 594 m Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States, and by average depth it is the deepest lake in the Western Hemisphere.

   More about Crater Lake →

2. 02 Lake Toba

   Indonesia · 37.6 km from Pematangsiantar2.670° N 98.888° E

   

   Lake Toba fills the caldera of a supervolcano in the highlands of North Sumatra. It is the largest lake in Indonesia and the largest volcanic lake on Earth: about 100 km long and 30 km wide, up to 505 m deep, with its surface at around 900 m above sea level. In the middle rises Samosir Island, which is in fact the resurgent floor of the volcano, pushed up at least 450 m by magma since the great eruption. The whole caldera is a UNESCO Global Geopark, recognised in 2020.

   Did you know? Samosir, at about 630 square kilometres, is the world's largest island within an island, sitting in a lake on the island of Sumatra.

   More about Lake Toba →

3. 03 Blue Lake (Warwar)

   Blue Lake

   Australia · 2.1 km from Mount Gambier37.847° S 140.778° E

   

   Blue Lake / Warwar fills a volcanic crater on the edge of Mount Gambier, in South Australia's Limestone Coast, and for part of every year it is one of the most startling colours in the Australian landscape. Through the cooler months the water looks a dull steel grey-blue; then, around November, it turns an intense cobalt that lasts through the summer before fading again in late summer and autumn. The change is thought to come from the warming of the surface layers: as the water reaches about 20°C, dissolved calcium carbonate from the surrounding limestone precipitates into microscopic crystals that scatter blue light, while in winter the lake mixes and grows murkier.

   Did you know? Radiocarbon dating of plant fibres in the crater suggests the volcano last erupted a little before 6,000 years ago, though earlier estimates ranged far wider.

   More about Blue Lake (Warwar) →

4. 04 Lagoa das Sete Cidades

   Portugal · 15.9 km from Ponta Delgada37.855° N 25.786° W

   

   At the western end of São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores, the ground falls away into a caldera roughly six by five kilometres wide, and on its floor lies the biggest body of fresh water in the archipelago. Lagoa das Sete Cidades covers about 4.4 square kilometres and is really one lake pinched in the middle: a shallow channel, crossed by a low bridge, divides a green-tinted basin, Lagoa Verde, from a blue one, Lagoa Azul. The difference in colour, most striking from the rim, comes from the way the two parts reflect light and from their differing ecology. A small village, also called Sete Cidades, sits on the caldera floor beside the water.

   Did you know? A tunnel more than 1,200 metres long, dug through the caldera wall between 1930 and 1937, drains excess water to stop the lake flooding the village.

   More about Lagoa das Sete Cidades →

5. 05 Lagoa do Fogo

   Portugal · 17.3 km from Ponta Delgada37.763° N 25.471° W

   

   Lagoa do Fogo, the "Lake of Fire", fills the summit caldera of the Água de Pau volcano in the middle of São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores. The lake surface lies at 575 m, sunk deep inside steep crater walls that climb to about 947 m at Pico da Barrosa, and from the rim the view drops straight onto an elliptical sheet of very blue water, some 3 by 2.5 km and up to 30 m deep, with a sandy beach along its shore. On misty days the lake appears and vanishes as clouds drift across the crater.

   Did you know? The volcano's last eruption began on 29 June 1563 and raged until 3 July, accompanied by violent earthquakes that wrought widespread destruction on São Miguel.

   More about Lagoa do Fogo →

6. 06 Lake Nemrut

   Nemrut Gölü

   Turkey · 13.6 km from Tatvan38.619° N 42.222° E

   

   On the western shore of Lake Van in eastern Turkey, the volcano Nemrut has a summit that has fallen in on itself, leaving a caldera nearly ten kilometres across. Much of its floor is filled by Lake Nemrut, deep blue water at about 2,250 metres above sea level, enclosed by the steep inner walls of the crater. It is one of the largest volcanic crater lakes in the world — 12.4 km² in area and as much as 176 metres deep — and its fresh water is clear enough to drink.

   Did you know? Obsidian from Nemrut was among the most important toolmaking stones of the Stone Age, traded as far as Mesopotamia and the Dead Sea region.

   More about Lake Nemrut →

7. 07 Quilotoa

   Ecuador · 32.9 km from Latacunga0.861° S 78.897° W

   

   From the rim of Quilotoa the ground simply falls away. Below lies a round lake about 3 km across, filling the crater of a volcano in Ecuador's central highlands, its surface a startling green that shifts towards turquoise or deep teal with the light and the clouds. The colour comes from minerals dissolved in the water. The lake sits at about 3,500 metres, some 250 metres deep, while the rim around it rises to more than 3,900 metres, so the whole basin feels like a bowl carved into the roof of the country.

   Did you know? Before its great eruption around 1280, Quilotoa had been quiet for about 14,000 years.

   More about Quilotoa →

8. 08 Lake Batur

   Indonesia · 38 km from Singaraja8.257° S 115.409° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage

   

   Lake Batur fills the southeastern floor of the Batur caldera in the Kintamani highlands of central Bali, some 30 km northeast of Ubud. At about 1,030 metres above sea level and close to 16 square kilometres in area, it is the largest lake on the island, with a deepest point of around 88 metres. The setting explains its fame: the lake lies inside a double caldera left by two enormous collapses of an old magma chamber, dated to roughly 29,000 and 20,000 years ago, and out of the inner basin rises Mount Batur, an active cone standing some 700 metres above the water. UNESCO added the Batur caldera to its Global Geoparks Network in 2012.

   More about Lake Batur →

9. 09 Heaven Lake

   People's Republic of China42.006° N 128.057° E

   

   Heaven Lake fills the caldera left by the so-called Millennium Eruption of 946, one of the most violent volcanic events anywhere on Earth in the last five thousand years, which blasted out somewhere between 100 and 120 cubic kilometres of ash and rock. What's left is the highest and largest crater lake in Northeast Asia: a sheet of water sitting at 2,189 metres, plunging to nearly 400 metres in places, ringed by sixteen peaks that all clear 2,500 metres. For roughly eight months of the year, from mid-October to mid-June, it's locked under ice.

   Did you know? Under secret Sino-Korean treaties of 1962 and 1964, North Korea received 54.5 percent of the lake's surface and nine of the sixteen surrounding peaks.

   More about Heaven Lake →

10. 10 Lake Mashū

    Japan43.583° N 144.517° E

    

    Lake Mashū sits at the bottom of a caldera in eastern Hokkaido, ringed by crater walls that drop about 200 metres to the water on every side. No river leaves it and only two small streams enter, so the lake loses water only by seepage, and there is no settlement or path on its shore: people see it from the rim, looking down into a closed oval of deep blue roughly six kilometres long. In the middle stands Kamuishu, a small island that is the tip of a lava dome, the only interruption on the surface.

    Did you know? The caldera-forming eruption about 7,000 years ago threw out roughly 11 cubic kilometres of tephra and is rated 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.

    More about Lake Mashū →

11. 11 Ijen Crater Lake

    Indonesia · 20.8 km from Banyuwangi8.057° S 114.242° E

    

    Inside the crater of Ijen, in the far east of Java, lies a lake that looks like a pool of milky turquoise paint — and is one of the most hostile bodies of water on Earth. About 1 km across and up to 200 m deep, it holds some 36 million cubic metres of water so charged with sulphuric acid that measurements have recorded a pH below 0.3 in places. It is the largest highly acidic crater lake in the world, and the steam drifting off its surface stings the eyes and throat of anyone standing on the rim.

    Did you know? The lake drains through a breach in the crater wall at about 50 litres per second, feeding the acidic Banyupahit river, whose name means 'bitter water'.

    More about Ijen Crater Lake →

12. 12 Kelimutu

    Indonesia · 21.4 km from Ende8.770° S 121.820° E

    

    Kelimutu's three crater lakes sit almost side by side, separated in places by walls of rock only a few dozen metres wide, yet they routinely show completely different colors from one another — one might run turquoise while its neighbor sits black, or maroon, or milky white, and any of the three can shift color again within months. Locals and researchers have both been tracking these color changes for generations; measured shifts have occurred as often as several times within a single year, driven by changing concentrations of dissolved minerals and gases rising from the volcanic system beneath the lakebeds, which alter how each lake absorbs and reflects light as the chemistry evolves.

    Did you know? The lakes are extraordinarily acidic: readings have gone as low as about pH 0.5, far more acidic than lemon juice.

    More about Kelimutu →

13. 13 Cuicocha

    Ecuador · 26.7 km from Ibarra0.301° N 78.363° W

    

    Cuicocha is a caldera lake about three kilometres across, sunk into the foot of Cotacachi volcano in the northern Andes of Ecuador. Its water fills a basin up to 200 metres deep, and from the rim, at 3,246 metres above sea level, two forested islands rise out of the middle like the backs of sleeping animals. Behind it rises the cone of Cotacachi, part of the Cordillera Occidental, the western chain of the Ecuadorian Andes.

    Did you know? The eruption that formed the caldera about 3,100 years ago buried the surrounding countryside under volcanic ash up to 20 centimetres deep.

    More about Cuicocha →

14. 14 Lake Pinatubo

    Philippines · 21 km from Angeles15.130° N 120.350° E

    

    Lake Pinatubo fills the crater left by one of the most violent eruptions of the 20th century. On 15 June 1991 Mount Pinatubo, on the island of Luzon, exploded after roughly five centuries of quiet, in an eruption rated 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index and surpassed in that century only by Novarupta in Alaska in 1912. It expelled around ten cubic kilometres of magma and some 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide, a haze that lowered global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius over the following two years. The summit, once about 1,745 metres high, collapsed into a caldera around 2.5 km wide.

    Did you know? In 1992 a new lava dome rose inside the young lake as an island, only to be drowned later as the water kept rising.

    More about Lake Pinatubo →

15. 15 Emerald Lakes

    New Zealand · 21.3 km from Tūrangi39.134° S 175.654° E

    

    After hours of walking across grey ash, black lava and the rust-coloured slopes of Red Crater, the Emerald Lakes come as a shock of colour. Three small pools lie cupped in old explosion craters high on Mount Tongariro, in the central North Island of New Zealand, at about 1,725 metres above sea level, and their water is a brilliant green that looks almost artificial against the barren volcanic ground. Their Māori name, Ngā Rotopounamu, means the greenstone lakes, and the comparison is exact.

    Did you know? The lake water is strongly acidic, with a pH of roughly 3 to 5, fed by a geothermal system heated by magma deep below.

    More about Emerald Lakes →

16. 16 Lake Segara Anak

    Indonesia · 35.1 km from Mataram8.404° S 116.400° E

    

    Segara Anak, "child of the sea", is the crescent-shaped blue lake that fills much of the great caldera beside Mount Rinjani on Lombok, and its name refers to a colour that recalls the ocean. It lies at about 2,000 metres above sea level inside an oval basin some 6 by 8.5 km, and reaches about 230 metres at its deepest.

    More about Lake Segara Anak →

17. 17 Okama Crater Lake (Zaō)

    Japan · 18.7 km from Yamagata38.136° N 140.449° E

    

    Okama — "the cauldron" — is the crater lake at the heart of the Zaō volcanic range in northern Honshu, lying at about 1,550 metres on the border of Miyagi and Yamagata prefectures. It fills the crater of Goshiki-dake, the central volcanic cone of the range, and it is almost perfectly round: roughly 325 metres across in both directions, about a kilometre around, and up to 27.6 metres deep. Steep, bare walls of grey and ochre volcanic debris drop straight to the water on every side, so the lake is seen from above, like a jewel set in a rough stone bowl.

    Did you know? The lake's depth has swung dramatically with volcanic activity: about 50 m in 1908, 35 m in 1937, then back to 63 m during the unrest of 1939.

    More about Okama Crater Lake (Zaō) →

18. 18 Al Wahbah crater

    Saudi Arabia22.900° N 41.139° E

    

    In the middle of the dark lava plains of western Saudi Arabia the ground opens into an almost perfect bowl about 2 km across and roughly 250 metres deep, its floor gleaming white. Al Wahbah crater, also known as Maqla Tamiyyah, is one of the best-known volcanic landforms in Saudi Arabia: steep, nearly circular walls of layered rock enclose a flat bed of white sodium phosphate crystals that looks like snow or a dried-up lake from the rim.

    Did you know? In 2024 the International Union of Geological Sciences named Al Wahbah one of the world's 100 geological heritage sites, choosing it from 174 nominations.

    More about Al Wahbah crater →

19. 19 Kawah Putih

    Indonesia · 30.3 km from Bandung7.166° S 107.402° E

    

    Kawah Putih, the "White Crater", is a volcanic lake high on the flank of Mount Patuha, a stratovolcano in the highlands south of Bandung in West Java. At about 2,430 metres the air is cool, often around 10°C, and mist drifts across the water. The lake is intensely acidic and rich in sulphur, and its colour changes with temperature and chemistry, from milky turquoise to pale green, whitish or even brown; the rocks and sand of the shore have been bleached almost white by the acid water.

    Did you know? The lake's water has measured between about pH 0.5 and 1.3, making it more acidic than the gastric juice in a human stomach.

    More about Kawah Putih →

20. 20 Kagami-numa (Hachimantai Dragon Eye)

    Japan · 35.1 km from Morioka39.954° N 140.854° E

    

    For a few weeks each spring, a small crater lake near the summit of Hachimantai turns into a giant eye staring up at the sky. As the snow melts, the surface of Kagami-numa thaws first around its rim, leaving a pale disc of snow and ice floating at the centre, encircled by a ring of deep blue meltwater. The effect, seen from the path above, is so much like a vast iris and pupil that the lake has become known as the Hachimantai Dragon Eye, a name that won it the Cool Japan Award in 2019.

    Did you know? Nobody has fully explained why the snow melts from the rim inwards here, producing the eye pattern that neighbouring ponds do not show.

    More about Kagami-numa (Hachimantai Dragon Eye) →