The Most Beautiful Lakes in Italy
7 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful lakes in Italy are Lake Garda, Lake Maggiore and Lake Como. The list covers 7 lakes. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Italy's most luminous lakes lie in the Dolomites, where pale dolomite rock towers above high valleys scoured by ice-age glaciers. Snowmelt and springs fill small basins at the foot of the walls, and fine rock flour suspended in the water scatters sunlight into shades of jade, emerald and turquoise, so that each lake becomes a mirror for the peaks of a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.
Lago di Braies, in South Tyrol, lies beneath the cliffs of the Seekofel, its still green water crossed by wooden rowing boats moored at an old boathouse. Lake Carezza, known in German as Karersee, reflects the jagged Latemar range in a clear, many-coloured surface, and Ladin legend says its colours come from a rainbow a sorcerer cast into the water to win a water nymph. Lake Sorapiss, above Cortina d'Ampezzo, is reached only on foot and glows an almost milky turquoise in a stony amphitheatre beneath the Sorapiss group and the needle of the Dito di Dio.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake Garda | Lake | |
| 2 | Lake Maggiore | Lake | |
| 3 | Lake Como | Lake | |
| 4 | Lago di Braies | Lake | |
| 5 | Lake Carezza (Karersee) | Lake | |
| 6 | Lake Orta | Lake | |
| 7 | Lake Sorapiss | Lake |
01 Lake Garda
Lago di Garda
Italy · 33.1 km from Verona45.633° N 10.667° E
Image by Leonhard_Niederwimmer from Pixabay The best way to see the lake is from the water: the ferries show how sharply the landscape changes from the flat south to the mountain walls of the north, and the lakeside path near Limone gives a similar view on foot or by bike.
02 Lake Maggiore
Lago Maggiore
Italy · 22.3 km from Lugano46.098° N 8.715° E
Image by Makalu from Pixabay Tourism took off in the mid-19th century and gained a royal seal of approval when Queen Victoria stayed at Baveno in 1879. Earlier, the lake had been a highway for marble quarried on its shores and carried by water to build Milan Cathedral. It has a footnote in the history of science too: Alessandro Volta first isolated methane in the late 1770s from marsh gas he collected here.
03 Lake Como
Lago di Como
Italy · 25.6 km from Como46.000° N 9.267° E
Image by GPoulsen from Pixabay Popularity has a price. In 2023 the area logged about 4.8 million overnight stays, heavily concentrated in summer, and the most photographed villages can be overwhelmed at weekends. Spring, when the villa gardens are in flower, and early autumn are calmer times to explore by boat.
04 Lago di Braies
Italy46.694° N 12.085° E
Image by 16018388 from Pixabay The hotel on the northern shore carries a quieter history. In the last days of April 1945 the SS moved a group of 139 prominent prisoners of the Nazi regime, among them aristocrats, politicians and clergy from seventeen countries, from Dachau to the Puster Valley, apparently to be held as hostages. On 30 April a Wehrmacht officer forced their guards to stand down, the prisoners were brought to the Hotel Pragser Wildsee, and American troops reached them there on 4 May. An archive at the hotel keeps that episode documented, and relatives of the German resistance still gather there each July.
Did you know? The lake holds roughly 5.3 million cubic metres of water, with an average depth of about 17 metres.
05 Lake Carezza (Karersee)
Lago di Carezza
Italy · 19.4 km from Bolzano46.409° N 11.575° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay The lake lies at about 1,520 metres in the municipality of Welschnofen (Nova Levante), in the Eggental valley. It is a protected alpine lake: swimming is not allowed, and the shore is best seen from the paths that circle it through the woods, the longer loops crossing a small suspension bridge and offering views back over the water to the Latemar.
Did you know? Agatha Christie, the Winnetou author Karl May and the Viennese writer Arthur Schnitzler were among the hotel's famous guests.
06 Lake Orta
Lago d'Orta
Italy45.810° N 8.396° E
Image by fabiovaleggia from Pixabay The lake is unusual in other ways too. It reaches 143 metres at its deepest, and its only outlet, the Nigoglia, leaves the northern tip at Omegna and flows north, toward the Alps, a rarity among the subalpine lakes that otherwise drain south to the Po plain. In the 20th century the water was badly poisoned by copper and ammonia from a rayon factory on the southern shore, until plankton and fish all but disappeared. Between 1989 and 1990 about 10,900 tonnes of powdered limestone were spread on the lake to neutralise its acidity, and plankton and fish soon returned.
Did you know? Legend says Saint Julius crossed to the island on his outspread cloak because no boatman would take him.
07 Lake Sorapiss
Lago di Sorapiss
Italy46.520° N 12.224° E
Image by shogun from Pixabay The lake can only be reached on foot, and the walk is part of the experience. Trail 215 leaves the road just east of the Passo Tre Croci, at about 1,800 metres, and runs for around five kilometres along the flank of the mountain, with some narrow and exposed passages secured by steel cables and metal ladders. No climbing equipment is needed, but sure footing is, and most walkers take around one and a half to two hours each way.
Did you know? In 1924 the Venice section of the Italian Alpine Club built a new hut named after Luigi Luzzatti, which burned down completely in 1959.
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 Italy?
- On our list, Lake Garda ranks first, followed by Lake Maggiore and Lake Como.
- Why are the lakes of the Dolomites so turquoise?
- Glacial and spring water carries very fine particles of ground rock that stay suspended and scatter sunlight, while the pale limestone and dolomite lake beds deepen the colour.
- What is the legend of Lake Carezza?
- In Ladin legend a sorcerer tried to win a water nymph living in the lake by casting a rainbow over it; when she fled, he shattered the rainbow into the water, which is said to give the lake its colours.
- How many lakes are on this list in Italy?
- The list covers 7 lakes.