The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Europe

133 places in 26 countries · updated 14 October 2026

1. 01 Lake Garda

   Lago di Garda

   Italy · 33.1 km from Verona45.633° N 10.667° E

   

   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.

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2. 02 Rhine Falls

   Rheinfall

   Switzerland · 3.4 km from Schaffhausen47.677° N 8.616° E

   

   Two castles frame the scene. On the Zurich bank, Schloss Laufen sits right above the falls, with viewing platforms beside the falling water reached by steep stairways; on the Schaffhausen side the small Schlössli Wörth stands at the edge of the basin. Boats cross the pool below and take visitors out to the central rock.

   Did you know? Fireworks first lit up the falls in 1857, and a large fireworks display around Swiss National Day has been held every year since 1966.

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3. 03 Bay of Kotor

   Бока Которска

   Montenegro42.450° N 18.670° E

   

   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.

   Did you know? According to legend, sailors found an icon of the Madonna on a sea rock in 1452 and vowed to add a stone after every safe voyage.

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4. 04 Capri

   Isola di Capri

   Italy · 32.4 km from Naples40.550° N 14.233° E

   

   The Romans started it. Augustus developed Capri as a private retreat, and his successor Tiberius, according to Tacitus, built twelve villas here; in AD 27 he moved to the island for good and governed the empire from it until his death ten years later. The ruins of Villa Jovis, the largest of his residences, sit on the island's eastern headland and are among the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy.

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5. 05 Lake Ohrid

   North Macedonia · 15.5 km from Pogradec41.033° N 20.717° E

   • UNESCO World Heritage
   • UNESCO natural beauty

   

   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.

   Did you know? Driven by wind and the Earth's rotation, the surface water circulates around the shoreline in an anticlockwise direction.

   More about Lake Ohrid →

6. 06 Morskie Oko

   Poland49.197° N 20.071° E

   

   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? Before the name Morskie Oko took hold, a 1650 source called it Biały Staw, the White Lake, and Austrian maps of 1880 still labelled it Fish Lake.

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7. 07 Sørvágsvatn

   Faroe Islands · 21.7 km from Tórshavn62.050° N 7.233° W

   

   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? In 1941 a Catalina flying boat of RAF Coastal Command became the first aircraft to land on the lake, which the British used as a seaplane base.

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8. 08 Soča River

   Soča

   Slovenia46.412° N 13.723° E

   

   The best of it is the upper course. Below the source the river squeezes through the Big and Little Soča gorges, where the current has polished white limestone into chutes, potholes and narrow slots only a few metres wide, and then opens into a broad gravel valley past Bovec, Kobarid and Tolmin, with the Tolmin Gorges on a side stream nearby.

   Did you know? Ernest Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms draws on the fighting along the river and the Italian retreat after the Battle of Caporetto.

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9. 09 Lake Ritsa

   Georgia43.481° N 40.541° E

   

   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.

   Did you know? The water level rises and falls by 2 to 3 metres over the year as the feeding rivers swell and shrink.

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10. 10 Navagio

    Ναυάγιο

    Greece37.860° N 20.625° E

    

    The most repeated version of the story says the Panagiotis was running contraband cigarettes from Turkey, bound for Italian buyers, when the pursuit forced her into the cove. It's the story every boat guide tells, but it was never proven: the captain was never convicted of smuggling, and no official source ever confirmed the cargo. Nearly half a century later, what actually happened that night is still disputed rather than settled fact.

    Did you know? A Greek newspaper report in October 1980 put the cargo at about 2,000 cases of cigarettes, valued at some 30 million drachmas.

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11. 11 Sveti Stefan

    Montenegro · 38.7 km from Podgorica42.256° N 18.891° E

    

    It began as a fortified refuge of the Paštrovići clan, who placed themselves under Venetian protection in 1423. Local tradition says the walls were paid for with loot taken from Ottoman ships during the siege of Kotor in 1539, and that each of the Paštrovići families had a house inside. By the 19th century about 400 people lived here, but emigration and war emptied it, and by 1954 only twenty remained.

    Did you know? After the island became a hotel, the Yugoslav authorities turned one of its churches, belonging to the Praskvica Monastery, into a casino.

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12. 12 Seven Sisters (Geirangerfjord)

    Norway62.107° N 7.094° E

    

    Directly across the water stands a single fall, Friaren — the Suitor, also called Skageflåfossen — and local tradition joins the two in a story. The suitor, the tale goes, courted the sisters one by one and was turned down by all of them; in one version he still flirts with them across the fjord, in another, spurned for good, he took to drink, which is why his waterfall is said to have the shape of a bottle.

    Did you know? The falls are fed by streams draining two high valleys, Ystedalen and Sanddalen, and run strongest in June when snow melts in the mountains.

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13. 13 Seljalandsfoss

    Iceland63.615° N 19.988° W

    

    The cliff itself is a record of Iceland's past: it once marked the island's southern coastline, and today it stands inland above flat, green lowlands, an old sea cliff over which the meltwater of the highlands still finds its way.

    Did you know? A large boulder called Franskanef stands in front of Gljúfrabúi's gorge and hides the base of that waterfall from view.

    More about Seljalandsfoss →

14. 14 Ionian Islands

    Επτάνησα

    Greece37.800° N 20.700° E

    

    That layering is easiest to read in Corfu Town, whose Old Town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2007: a Venetian citadel cut off from the town by a sea-filled moat, narrow paved lanes called kantounia, and a broad esplanade between fortress and houses. The landscape set pieces lie further south.

    Did you know? From 1815 the islands were a British protectorate called the United States of the Ionian Islands, and islanders took up afternoon tea and cricket.

    More about Ionian Islands →

15. 15 Jökulsárlón

    Iceland64.076° N 16.230° W

    

    Its beauty lies in the ice. Blocks break off the glacier face and float out into the lagoon in shades from chalk white to glassy, ink-stained blue. They drift, turn over and slowly melt, and only when they have shrunk enough can they slip through the short channel to the Atlantic. On the black sand on either side of the outlet, stranded fragments glitter on the shore, a stretch now known as Diamond Beach.

    Did you know? Whether an iceberg looks milky white or vivid blue depends on how much air is trapped inside the ice and how light passes through its crystals.

    More about Jökulsárlón →

16. 16 Lake Maggiore

    Lago Maggiore

    Italy · 22.3 km from Lugano46.098° N 8.715° E

    

    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.

    More about Lake Maggiore →

17. 17 Plitvice Lakes National Park

    Nacionalni park Plitvička jezera

    Croatia44.880° N 15.616° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage
    • UNESCO natural beauty

    

    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? The upper lakes lie on dolomite bedrock, while the lower lakes sit in a limestone canyon.

    More about Plitvice Lakes National Park →

18. 18 Lanzarote

    Spain · 12 km from Arrecife29.035° N 13.635° W

    

    What makes Lanzarote unusual among volcanic islands is that one artist got to decide, almost single-handedly, how the island would present that landscape to the world.

    Did you know? A lava tube from Monte Corona, formed about 3,000 years ago, runs some 6 km inland and continues roughly 1.5 km under the sea as the so-called Tunnel of Atlantis.

    More about Lanzarote →

19. 19 Lake Bled

    Blejsko jezero

    Slovenia · 32.9 km from Klagenfurt46.364° N 14.095° E

    

    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? The bishops of Brixen kept the castle as their residence for some eight centuries.

    More about Lake Bled →

20. 20 Goðafoss

    Iceland · 25.3 km from Akureyri65.683° N 17.550° W

    

    The name can be read two ways in Icelandic, as "waterfall of the gods" or "waterfall of the chieftain", and a famous story ties it to one of the turning points of Icelandic history. Around the year 1000, the chieftain Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði played the decisive part at the Althing in making Christianity the official religion of Iceland. According to the popular tale, on his way home he threw the carvings of his old gods into the falls.

    Did you know? Place-name scholar Svavar Sigmundsson suggests the name may come from two crags at the falls that resemble pagan idols.

    More about Goðafoss →

21. 21 Oeschinen Lake

    Oeschinensee

    Switzerland46.498° N 7.727° E

    

    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.

    Did you know? Before a small dam was built at the outlet, the lake periodically overflowed, and a flood from it in 1846 may have been set off by an unseen rockfall.

    More about Oeschinen Lake →

22. 22 Lake Como

    Lago di Como

    Italy · 25.6 km from Como46.000° N 9.267° E

    

    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.

    More about Lake Como →

23. 23 Santorini

    Σαντορίνη

    Greece36.415° N 25.433° E

    

    That same eruption preserved Akrotiri on the south coast, a prosperous Bronze Age town whose multi-storey houses, drains and streets were sealed under ash before the blast. Its wall paintings — scenes of daily life, ritual, animals and ships — are among the most vivid images to survive from the Aegean Bronze Age.

    Did you know? Ancient writers say that before it was called Thera the island bore the name Kallistē, meaning the most beautiful one.

    More about Santorini →

24. 24 Lofoten

    Norway68.333° N 14.666° E

    

    For more than a thousand years these waters have hosted one of the great cod fisheries of Europe. Each winter the fish come down from the Barents Sea to spawn here, and the trade in dried cod once ran south through Bergen under the Hanseatic League. The fishing villages are the human face of the landscape.

    Did you know? Vågan, near today's Kabelvåg, is the first known town in northern Norway, dating to the early Viking Age or even earlier.

    More about Lofoten →

25. 25 Skógafoss

    Iceland63.530° N 19.514° W

    

    Local legend says a Viking settler named Þrasi Þórólfsson hid a chest of gold beneath the falls around the year 900, and that the first person to reach it would keep the treasure.

    Did you know? From the top, a trail follows the river up to the Fimmvörðuháls pass between the Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull glaciers, and on down to Þórsmörk.

    More about Skógafoss →

26. 26 Lake of Sainte-Croix

    Lac de Sainte-Croix

    France43.764° N 6.184° E

    

    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.

    Did you know? By surface area it ranks as the fourth-largest reservoir in metropolitan France, behind Der-Chantecoq, Serre-Ponçon and the Lac d'Orient.

    More about Lake of Sainte-Croix →

27. 27 Vøringsfossen

    Norway60.427° N 7.251° E

    

    Its fame began in 1821, when the astronomer Christopher Hansteen made his way to the fall and wrote about it, and within decades it had become a national symbol and one of the country's first real tourist attractions. A bridle path was laid out in 1872 for English travellers, and visitors also climbed a stairway of around 1,500 steps up the side of the valley.

    Did you know? Every piece of building material for the Fossli Hotel on the canyon rim had to be carried up from Eidfjord on horseback.

    More about Vøringsfossen →

28. 28 Voidokilia Beach

    Βοϊδοκοιλιά

    Greece36.964° N 21.663° E

    

    The bay is framed by rock at both ends, and history clings to it. On the southern headland stand the ruins of Paleokastro, the Old Navarino Castle, a Frankish fortress built in the 1280s overlooking both the lagoon and the great bay of Navarino. Below its walls opens a cave that local tradition links with King Nestor of Pylos, the wise old ruler of Homer's poems; archaeologists have been investigating it since the 1870s.

    Did you know? The tholos tomb above the beach is about 5 metres across, its floor covered with pebbles, and it held around seven burials.

    More about Voidokilia Beach →

29. 29 Our Lady of the Rocks

    Montenegro42.487° N 18.689° E

    • UNESCO World Heritage

    

    That tradition, called Fašinada, is not a historical footnote — it's still practiced every single year. On 22 July, a procession of boats sails out from Perast and drops stones onto the same spot the original islet grew from, a ritual that has run essentially unbroken since the 1400s and keeps the island technically still under construction after 570-odd years.

    Did you know? The whole artificial island covers only about 3,000 square metres, roughly the size of half a football pitch.

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30. 30 Hvítserkur

    Iceland65.606° N 20.635° W

    

    Local tradition holds that Hvítserkur is a troll who set out to destroy the monastery at Þingeyrar across the bay and was caught by the rising sun and turned to stone. The story has a curious modern sequel: in the middle of the 20th century, worried that the sea would bring the "troll" down, local farmers shored up its base with concrete, so that the troll still stands.

    Did you know? Iceland's postal service put Hvítserkur on a postage stamp in 1990.

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