The Most Beautiful Lakes in Europe
24 places in 14 countries · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in Europe are Lake Garda (Italy), Bay of Kotor (Montenegro) and Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia). The list covers 24 lakes in 14 countries. Italy has the most, with 7. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Most of Europe's finest lakes were dug by ice. Glaciers of the last ice age scooped basins out of the Alps, the Tatras and the Rila mountains, and dammed others with the rock debris they left behind, so lakes now sit at the feet of cliffs with water tinted green or turquoise by fine mineral silt. Elsewhere water gathers in limestone karst or in drowned valleys along the coast.
Lake Bled in Slovenia holds a small island with a church, watched over by a castle on a cliff above the shore. Oeschinen Lake lies beneath the walls of the Blüemlisalp above Kandersteg, Lago di Braies is enclosed by the pale peaks of the Dolomites, and the Eibsee sits at the foot of the Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain. Morskie Oko, the largest lake in the Tatras, is surrounded by granite peaks, and the Seven Rila Lakes in Bulgaria descend one below another through a chain of glacial hollows.
The Bay of Kotor is not a lake in the strict sense but a drowned river canyon on the Adriatic, enclosed by steep mountains, with the walled town of Kotor at its far end. On the Faroe Islands, Sørvágsvatn appears to hang above the ocean on top of the cliffs, and spills into the sea in a waterfall.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Garda | Lake | Italy | |
| 2 | Bay of Kotor | Lake | Montenegro | |
| 3 | Lake Ohrid | Lake | North Macedonia | ✓ |
| 4 | Morskie Oko | Lake | Poland | |
| 5 | Sørvágsvatn | Lake | Faroe Islands | |
| 6 | Lake Ritsa | Lake | Georgia | |
| 7 | Lake Maggiore | Lake | Italy | |
| 8 | Plitvice Lakes National Park | National park | Croatia | ✓ |
| 9 | Lake Bled | Lake | Slovenia | |
| 10 | Oeschinen Lake | Lake | Switzerland | |
| 11 | Lake Como | Lake | Italy | |
| 12 | Lago di Braies | Lake | Italy | |
| 13 | Seven Rila Lakes | Lake | Bulgaria | |
| 14 | Obersee | Lake | Germany | |
| 15 | Eibsee | Lake | Germany | |
| 16 | Lake Annecy | Lake | France | |
| 17 | Lake Carezza (Karersee) | Lake | Italy | |
| 18 | Black Lake (Durmitor) | Lake | Montenegro | |
| 19 | Lake Bohinj | Lake | Slovenia | |
| 20 | Lake Orta | Lake | Italy | |
| 21 | Grüner See | Lake | Austria | |
| 22 | Lake Sorapiss | Lake | Italy | |
| 23 | Lagos de Covadonga | Lake | Spain | |
| 24 | Vorderer Gosausee | Lake | Austria |
01 Lake Garda
Lago di Garda
Italy · 33.1 km from Verona45.633° N 10.667° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The lake owes its mild climate to its sheer volume of water, which keeps winters unusually soft for a latitude of 46° north. Olives, cypresses and palms grow along the shore, and at Limone the old terraced lemon houses recall a time when citrus was grown here commercially. The Romans knew the lake as Benacus and built villas along it; the remains of a vast Roman villa at the tip of the Sirmione peninsula are known as the Grottoes of Catullus. In the 13th century the Scaliger family of Verona fortified the shores, and their castles still stand at Sirmione, Malcesine and Riva.
02 Bay of Kotor
Бока Которска
Montenegro42.450° N 18.670° E
Image by VeleMarinkovic from Pixabay The bay's shape did more than create a nice view: it built a natural fortress. The inlet narrows to just 300 metres at the Verige Strait before opening back out into a wide inner basin, a chokepoint narrow enough that a chain could once be stretched across it to block enemy ships — which is exactly what happened during multiple historical sieges. Whoever controlled that strait controlled the entire inner bay, and the town of Kotor at its innermost point became worth fighting over for exactly that reason: a harbour effectively immune to naval assault, backed by mountains that supplied both limestone for building and timber for ships.
Did you know? The Sopot spring near Risan is usually dry, but after heavy rain a waterfall bursts from the cliff about 20 metres above the sea.
03 Lake Ohrid
North Macedonia · 15.5 km from Pogradec41.033° N 20.717° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 That filtered water gives Ohrid its astonishing clarity: on a calm day you can see down some twenty metres. It also sustains one of the most remarkable freshwater ecosystems in the world. Like Baikal and Tanganyika, Ohrid has evolved its own species at every level of the food chain, from algae and sponges to snails, crustaceans and two endemic trout; around 200 species live nowhere else, and almost four-fifths of its molluscs are unique to the lake.
Did you know? Water entering Lake Ohrid stays on average about 70 years before it evaporates or leaves through the Black Drin.
04 Morskie Oko
Poland49.197° N 20.071° E
Image by PRZEMKO from Pixabay The name means "Eye of the Sea". An old local tale held that the lake was joined to the sea by an underground passage; earlier it was simply called the Fish Lake for its trout, which are uncommon in Tatra waters. The first written mention dates from 1575. Above it, reached by a steep path from the shore, lies a second lake, Czarny Staw pod Rysami, whose water spills down into Morskie Oko.
Did you know? The lake holds roughly ten million cubic metres of water, and its green colour sits at level IV on the Forel-Ule water colour scale.
05 Sørvágsvatn
Faroe Islands · 21.7 km from Tórshavn62.050° N 7.233° W
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trælanípa means 'slave cliff,' and local tradition holds that during the Viking and medieval settlement of the islands, enslaved people no longer able to work were pushed to their deaths from this exact edge — a grim historical layer under a spot now visited almost entirely for photography.
Did you know? Covering about 3.4 square kilometres, it is more than three times the size of Fjallavatn, the Faroes' second-largest lake, also on Vágar.
06 Lake Ritsa
Georgia43.481° N 40.541° E
Image by Mari_555 from Pixabay 5 square kilometres, and with a maximum depth of 116 metres it is the deepest lake in Abkhazia. It sits in the basin of the Bzyb river, east of the Gagra range, where the valleys of the Lashipse and the Yupshara meet. Six rivers feed it and one, the Yupshara, drains it, flowing on into the Gega and then the Bzyb. The surrounding slopes belong to the Euxine-Colchic deciduous forests, with groves of evergreen boxwood and Nordmann firs that can grow taller than 70 metres; higher up the forest gives way to subalpine meadows. The lake holds trout, and a nature reserve was created around it as early as 1930. A much smaller lake, Little Ritsa, lies nearby.
Did you know? Its average depth is about 63 metres, remarkable for a lake only 2.5 kilometres long.
07 Lake Maggiore
Lago Maggiore
Italy · 22.3 km from Lugano46.098° N 8.715° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay The lake bends so much that from almost nowhere can you see more than a part of it, which is its charm: the view keeps changing. The upper end is fully Alpine, hemmed in by steep slopes; the middle runs between gentler hills; the south opens onto the Lombard plain. On clear days the snowfields of Monte Rosa, about 50 km to the west, stand over the water. The climate is mild enough for lemons, olives and Mediterranean plants, and the lake is known for its gardens: those of Villa Taranto at Verbania, the Alpinia botanical garden above Stresa and the island gardens.
08 Plitvice Lakes National Park
Nacionalni park Plitvička jezera
Croatia44.880° N 15.616° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by Hobbyfotography from Pixabay That means the landscape people photograph is never finished; it's mid-construction, permanently. The famous shifts in the water's colour — turquoise, green, grey, depending on mineral content, sunlight angle and the season — come from exactly the same chemistry that's building the barriers, which is part of why the colour looks different every time someone visits rather than being some kind of seasonal trick.
Did you know? Its Veliki slap, the Great Waterfall, plunges 78 metres.
09 Lake Bled
Blejsko jezero
Slovenia · 32.9 km from Klagenfurt46.364° N 14.095° E
Image by detait from Pixabay People were drawn here long before the resorts. A deposit of gold appliqués from the 13th–12th centuries BC found by the shore suggests the lake was a Bronze Age cult site. Bled Castle, whose story reaches back to the early 11th century and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, still watches over the lake and now houses a museum. For centuries visitors have come for recreation and for the supposed healing benefits of the water.
Did you know? Archaeologists found an early medieval cemetery on the island dating back to the 9th century, with 124 documented burials, and traces of Neolithic visits.
10 Oeschinen Lake
Oeschinensee
Switzerland46.498° N 7.727° E
Günter Seggebäing, Coesfeld · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake owes its existence to a catastrophe. In prehistoric times a huge rock avalanche, most likely from the northern flank of the Doldenhorn, or possibly an earlier one from the Fisistock, came down across the valley and dammed it. The basin behind filled to cover a little over a square kilometre, with depths of up to 56 metres. There is no visible outlet: the water drains away underground through the rubble of the old landslide. In winter the lake freezes, and the ice is walked on when conditions allow; in summer, rowing boats go out under the cliffs.
Did you know? Modelling of that collapse shows the debris from the Doldenhorn reached the valley floor in roughly 20 seconds and came to rest within about a minute.
11 Lake Como
Lago di Como
Italy · 25.6 km from Como46.000° N 9.267° E
Image by GPoulsen from Pixabay The shores have been a retreat for the rich since Pliny the Younger built two villas here in the 1st century AD. The tradition revived in the Renaissance and has left a chain of gardens that are the lake's real treasure. Villa Carlotta, begun in 1690, is known for its spring show of azaleas and rhododendrons and for sculpture by Antonio Canova; Villa del Balbianello, built in 1787 on a wooded headland, has terraced gardens that film crews return to again and again; Villa Melzi is a Neoclassical house of 1808 to 1810 with a Japanese garden; Villa Monastero grew out of a Cistercian monastery. Villa d'Este, built in 1568 for a cardinal, is now a hotel.
12 Lago di Braies
Italy46.694° N 12.085° E
Image by 16018388 from Pixabay The best way to see it is on foot. A loop of a little over three kilometres follows the whole shore: the western side is broad and level, the eastern side narrow, rocky and stepped, with the view shifting at every bend between the open water, the forested slopes and the rock walls above. The lake lies inside the Fanes-Sennes-Prags Nature Park, and it is also the traditional starting point of the Alta Via 1, the long high route that crosses the Dolomites southward to Belluno. In winter the surface freezes hard enough for curling matches, held here since 2012, and the whole basin turns white and silent.
Did you know? Another legend says that on one full-moon night each year the last survivors of the Fanes people row around the lake, led by their queen.
13 Seven Rila Lakes
Седемте рилски езера
Bulgaria42.203° N 23.315° E
Image by videlindj from Pixabay Each lake is named for its character. The highest, Salzata ("The Tear"), is small and so clear that its bottom is visible. 5 metres, the deepest cirque lake in Bulgaria. Babreka ("The Kidney") has the steepest shores; Bliznaka ("The Twin") is the largest, at about 9 hectares; Trilistnika ("The Trefoil") is irregular and low-banked; Ribnoto Ezero ("The Fish Lake") is the shallowest; and Dolnoto Ezero ("The Lower Lake") gathers the water of all the others and sends it out as the Dzherman River, a tributary of the Struma. In the recent past the group and its cirque were known as Edi Göl, and several of the lakes had other names.
Did you know? The three highest lakes each drain separately into the Twin, from which the water passes in turn through the Trefoil, the Fish Lake and the Lower Lake.
14 Obersee
Germany · 33 km from Salzburg47.516° N 12.988° E
Alupus · CC BY-SA 3.0 3 kilometres long and 420 metres wide, covering 57 hectares at an altitude of 613 metres, and is up to 51 metres deep. It has no island and no inflowing river on the surface: the streams from the Röthwand and the neighbouring cliffs sink into the scree of the Fischunkel at the head of the valley and reach the lake underground. Its outflow, the Saletbach, runs about 600 metres north to the Königssee, widening on the way into the tiny Mittersee.
Did you know? The lake holds roughly 17 million cubic metres of water and has an average depth of about 30 metres.
15 Eibsee
Germany · 38.4 km from Innsbruck47.458° N 10.973° E
Image by TiBine from Pixabay The basin was left behind when the Isar–Loisach glacier withdrew at the end of the last ice age. Much later, between about 1700 and 1400 BC, a vast landslide — some 350 million cubic metres of rock spread over 13 square kilometres — swept across the central and eastern parts of the lake. It reshaped the valley floor and created today's lake with its many hollows and eight islands, which are therefore far younger than the basin they sit in. 2 km long and reaches a depth of around 35 metres. It has no surface outflow: its water drains away underground. A shallow neck only half a metre deep almost cuts off the north-eastern arm, the Untersee, from the main body of the lake.
Did you know? The lake floor holds 29 separate hollows, and its deepest point, 34.5 metres, lies only about 90 metres from the southern shore.
16 Lake Annecy
France · 6.8 km from Annecy45.850° N 6.167° E
Image by 1466325 from Pixabay The lake's famous colour — a clear turquoise that turns green and deep blue as the bottom drops away — is not simply a gift of nature but the result of a decision. By the 1950s the lake was choking on sewage and algae; an Annecy physician, Dr Paul-Louis Servettaz, had been sounding the alarm since 1943, and in 1957 eight lakeside municipalities formed a joint syndicate to save it. Between the early 1960s and 1976 they laid a sewage collector right round the shore, under the road that circles the lake, so that waste water never reaches it.
Did you know? Napoleon III gave the lake its steamboat Couronne de Savoie in 1861, after visiting Annecy with Empress Eugenie the year before.
17 Lake Carezza (Karersee)
Lago di Carezza
Italy · 19.4 km from Bolzano46.409° N 11.575° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay Its colours are the reason for its Ladin name, "rainbow lake". Depending on the light, the depth and the season, the water moves through bottle-green, emerald, turquoise and deep blue, often several at once from the shallows to the middle. The lake has no visible inflow: it is fed by underground springs from the Latemar, so its level and size change noticeably with the seasons. It reaches a little over 20 metres at its deepest.
Did you know? Empress Elisabeth of Austria, known as Sisi, spent a rest cure at the Grand Hotel Carezza in August 1897.
18 Black Lake (Durmitor)
Montenegro43.143° N 19.087° E
Ingo Mehling · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake is in fact two lakes joined together: the Big Lake and the Little Lake, linked by a narrow strait that dries out in summer. Together they cover just over half a square kilometre. The smaller basin is the deeper of the two, reaching about 49 metres, while the larger one is about 24.5 metres deep. The lakes behave unusually: in summer the water flows from the Big Lake into the Little Lake, while in winter the flow runs in the opposite direction. A path of about 3.5 kilometres leads around the whole shore.
Did you know? The lake's level can vary by up to 5 metres over the year, and in drought the Little Lake drops so low that a waterfall forms between the two basins.
19 Lake Bohinj
Bohinjsko jezero
Slovenia46.283° N 13.859° E
Image by tristanmimet from Pixabay The lake is fed from the west by the Savica, which emerges from a karst spring and drops 78 metres as a waterfall before running into the lake; the water comes from the basin of the Black Lake far above, travelling underground before it reappears. At the opposite, eastern end the Sava Bohinjka flows out under an old stone bridge, the first stretch of the river that soon becomes the Sava. Beside the bridge stands the small church of St John the Baptist, built before 1300 and among the finest pieces of medieval architecture in Slovenia.
Did you know? At the height of the last Ice Age, about 20,000 years ago, the Bohinj Glacier that carved the basin was roughly 800 metres thick.
20 Lake Orta
Lago d'Orta
Italy45.810° N 8.396° E
Image by fabiovaleggia from Pixabay Local tradition holds that Saint Julius came here at the end of the 4th century, found no boatman willing to take him across, spread his cloak on the water and sailed over on it, then drove out the serpents and dragons living on the island before founding a church. The basilica that stands there today was enlarged over the centuries and reached its present Romanesque form around the end of the 11th century.
Did you know? Its only outlet, the Nigoglia, flows north out of the lake at Omegna, unlike most rivers leaving the subalpine lakes.
21 Grüner See
Austria47.542° N 15.056° E
Herzi Pinki · CC BY-SA 3.0 The lake lies at about 770 metres near the hamlet of Oberort in the municipality of Tragöß-Sankt Katharein, ringed by forest and three mountains: Pribitz, Meßnerin and Trenchtling (Hochturm), the last rising to 2,081 metres. It exists because a prehistoric rockfall from the south flank of the Meßnerin dammed the valley. The water stays cold, at roughly 5–7 °C, and its level follows the seasons: in winter the lake can be only one or two metres deep, it reaches its peak of around 10–12 metres in late spring and early summer, and by autumn it largely drains away underground, leaving the meadows dry again.
Did you know? At its spring peak the lake stretches roughly 550 metres long and 320 metres wide, then shrinks back to a small pond.
22 Lake Sorapiss
Lago di Sorapiss
Italy46.520° N 12.224° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay Above the water rises the slender rock tower known as the Dito di Dio, the Finger of God, at 2,603 metres, one of the most recognisable silhouettes in this part of the Dolomites, and next to the lake stands the Rifugio Vandelli mountain hut. The surroundings are as much a part of the place as the lake itself: a circle of cliffs and scree, and the lake lying in the bottom of the cirque like a pool of coloured glass. Its appearance changes over the year: by late summer the level can drop dramatically, and from autumn to late spring the basin is buried under snow.
Did you know? That first hut was destroyed by an avalanche in 1895; its replacement, rebuilt in a more sheltered spot, was buried by another avalanche in 1913.
23 Lagos de Covadonga
Spain43.268° N 4.986° W
80kmh · CC BY 4.0 Enol is the larger of the two: about 750 metres long and 400 metres wide, at roughly 1,070 metres, and up to some 25 metres deep. It was left behind by a retreating glacier, whose terminal moraine still holds the water in like a plug. Ercina, slightly higher at about 1,108 metres, is a shallow lake, barely more than two metres deep, spreading over some eight hectares of meadow. Iron, manganese and mercury were mined at Buferrera, beside Ercina, until 1979. Below the lakes stands the sanctuary of Covadonga, the cave shrine that Spanish tradition links with the beginning of the Christian kingdoms of the north.
Did you know? According to a local legend, Lake Enol was formed from a single tear shed by the Virgin of Covadonga.
24 Vorderer Gosausee
Austria47.529° N 13.505° E
Dimitry Anikin · CC0 The lake lies at 933 metres at the northern foot of the Dachstein massif and is unusually deep for its size: up to about 75 metres. It is also partly a work of engineering. A rock-fill dam was built at its outlet in 1910–1911, and the water level was raised by about twelve metres for hydroelectric power; much of the lake's supply and drainage runs underground. In winter, when water is drawn off for power generation, the level falls sharply and the shoreline changes, so the lake looks quite different from season to season. In summer the water is clear enough to attract divers, and the cliffs on its eastern side are crossed by climbing routes.
Did you know? The rock-fill dam at the outlet is only about 17 metres high and 50 metres long, yet it holds back some 23 million cubic metres of water.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful lakes in Europe?
- On our list, Lake Garda (Italy) ranks first, followed by Bay of Kotor (Montenegro) and Lake Ohrid (North Macedonia).
- Which country has the most lakes in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (7), Austria (2) and Germany (2).
- Why are Alpine lakes so turquoise?
- Glaciers grind rock into very fine particles, often called rock flour, which stay suspended in meltwater. The particles scatter sunlight and give glacier-fed lakes their milky green or turquoise colour.
- Is the Bay of Kotor a fjord?
- It is often called a fjord, but geologically the Bay of Kotor is a submerged river canyon (a ria) that the sea flooded, rather than a valley carved by glaciers.
- How were the Seven Rila Lakes formed?
- The lakes fill hollows (cirques) carved by glaciers in the Rila mountains of Bulgaria. They lie one above another, linked by small streams and waterfalls.
- How many lakes are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 24 lakes in 14 countries. Italy has the most, with 7.