The Most Beautiful Reservoirs in Europe
5 places in 4 countries · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful reservoirs in Europe are Lake of Sainte-Croix (France), Piscina Mirabilis (Italy) and Lake Koman (Albania). The list covers 5 reservoirs in 4 countries. Italy has the most, with 2. Last updated 13 October 2026.
A reservoir is a landscape that people made, and Europe's most striking ones show it in surprising ways: a turquoise lake at the mouth of a famous canyon, a drowned village with its church tower still above the water, a drain like a hole in the surface of a mountain lake. The oldest of them is not a lake at all but a vaulted Roman cistern, proof that storing water has been an art in Europe for two thousand years.
The Lake of Sainte-Croix in Provence, created by a dam on the Verdon in the 1970s, spreads turquoise water where the river leaves the Verdon Gorge. Near Naples, the Piscina Mirabilis is a vast Roman cistern carved into the tuff at the end of an aqueduct, supplying the imperial fleet at Misenum, its vaults held up by rows of pillars. In Albania, Lake Koman winds like a fjord through the steep gorge of the Drin. Reschensee in South Tyrol is famous for the bell tower of old Graun, rising from the water above the village flooded in 1950. High in the Serra da Estrela in Portugal, Covão dos Conchos drains through a circular spillway that looks like a hole in the lake.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Lake of Sainte-Croix | Reservoir | France | |
| 2 | Piscina Mirabilis | Reservoir | Italy | |
| 3 | Lake Koman | Reservoir | Albania | |
| 4 | Reschensee | Reservoir | Italy | |
| 5 | Covão dos Conchos | Reservoir | Portugal |
01 Lake of Sainte-Croix
Lac de Sainte-Croix
France43.764° N 6.184° E
Image by ToNic-Pics from Pixabay With a surface of about 22 square kilometres and some 760 million cubic metres of water, it is among the largest bodies of water in metropolitan France. The filling drowned the old village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon, which was rebuilt on higher ground on the new shore; the neighbouring hill villages of Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon and Bauduen were spared after a 1968 decision to lower the planned water level. Today Bauduen's lanes and houses run right down to the water's edge, and Sainte-Croix-du-Verdon looks over the lake from its ridge, both with the feel of places that have always been lakeside.
Did you know? Between the world wars the industrial firm Schneider was assigned to build a dam here, but the project never left the drawing board.
02 Piscina Mirabilis
Piscina mirabilis
Italy · 14.7 km from Naples40.795° N 14.080° E
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Did you know? The same aqueduct once also supplied Pompeii and Herculaneum, until the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 buried both towns.
03 Lake Koman
Liqeni i Komanit
Albania · 20.6 km from Pukë42.219° N 19.899° E
Marie Čcheidzeová · CC BY-SA 4.0 The lake is a work of the late twentieth century. It was created on the Drin River between 1979 and 1988 by the dam of the Koman hydroelectric power station near the village of Koman, a wall about 115 metres high. Behind it the flooded valley runs for roughly 34 kilometres, fed not only by the Drin but also by the Shala and Valbona rivers that come down from the mountains of the north. The steep topography and the mix of forest, cliff and open water support a varied wildlife: golden jackal, red fox, badger, otter, beech marten and polecat live along the shores, and the birds recorded here include kingfisher, grey heron, quail, wryneck and great spotted woodpecker.
Did you know? A ferry has run on the lake since 1984, set up because the flooding of the valley cut mountain villages off from any road.
04 Reschensee
Lago di Resia
Italy46.801° N 10.531° E
Image by Glavo from Pixabay One piece of it never went under completely. The 14th-century bell tower of that church was simply left standing as the water rose around it, too solid and too tall to bother demolishing, and it has jutted from the surface ever since — the only visible trace of a place that otherwise exists only in memory and old photographs. It has become the valley's emblem, printed on everything from hiking maps to wine labels.
Did you know? The bells were taken down from the old tower on 18 July 1950, a week before the rest of the church was demolished.
05 Covão dos Conchos
Portugal · 13 km from Covilhã40.364° N 7.611° W
larahcv · CC0 The funnel is a piece of mid-twentieth-century hydraulic engineering rather than a curiosity built for show. It was constructed in 1955 to divert water from the Ribeira das Naves stream to the Lagoa Comprida reservoir, and it forms part of the hydroelectric system of the Serra da Estrela. The spillway is 4.6 metres high and 48 metres around, and the tunnel that carries the water away underground is 1,519 metres long. Over the six decades since its construction, moss and low vegetation have colonised the rim of the funnel, softening the concrete into something that looks almost natural.
Did you know? The water swallowed by the funnel ends up in Lagoa Comprida, a lake in a glacial hollow enlarged by a 29-metre masonry dam completed in 1966.
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 reservoirs in Europe?
- On our list, Lake of Sainte-Croix (France) ranks first, followed by Piscina Mirabilis (Italy) and Lake Koman (Albania).
- Which country has the most reservoirs in Europe?
- In our collection, the most come from Italy (2), Albania (1) and France (1).
- Why is there a church tower in Reschensee?
- When the dam was completed in 1950, the old village of Graun (Curon) was flooded. Its 14th-century bell tower was left standing and now rises from the water.
- What is the hole in Covão dos Conchos?
- It is a bell-mouth spillway built in the 1950s, a round funnel that takes water from the lake into a tunnel leading to another reservoir, Lagoa Comprida.
- What was the Piscina Mirabilis used for?
- It was a cistern at the end of the Aqua Augusta aqueduct, storing fresh water for the Roman fleet based at Misenum on the Bay of Naples.
- How many reservoirs are on this list in Europe?
- The list covers 5 reservoirs in 4 countries. Italy has the most, with 2.