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Lake Maggiore (, ; it, Lago Maggiore ; lmo, label= Western Lombard, Lagh Maggior; pms, Lagh Magior; literally 'Greater Lake') or Verbano (; la, Lacus Verbanus) is a large
lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much lar ...
located on the south side of the
Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, ...
. It is the second largest lake in
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
and the largest in southern Switzerland. The lake and its shoreline are divided between the Italian regions of
Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...
and Lombardy and the Swiss canton of
Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...
. Located halfway between Lake Orta and Lake Lugano, Lake Maggiore extends for about between Locarno and Arona. The climate is mild in both summer and winter, producing
Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...
vegetation, with many gardens growing rare and exotic plants. Well-known gardens include those of the Borromean and Brissago Islands, that of the
Villa Taranto The Giardini Botanici Villa Taranto (16 hectares) are botanical gardens located on the western shore of Lake Maggiore in Pallanza, Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Italy. They are open daily; an admission fee is charged. The gardens were establi ...
in Verbania, and the
Alpinia Botanical Garden The Giardino Botanico Alpinia (4 hectares) is a botanical garden specializing in alpine plants, located at 800 m altitude above Stresa on Lake Maggiore, Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Piedmont, Italy. It can be reached via the Lido di Carcia ...
above Stresa. Lake Maggiore is drained by the
Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...
, a main tributary of the Po. Its basin also collects the waters of several large lakes, notably Lake Lugano (through the Tresa), Lake Orta (through the Toce) and
Lake Varese Varese Lake ( it, Lago di Varese) is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, in the north of Italy. It has an area of 14.5 km², a medium depth of 11 m, and a maximum depth of 23 m. It hosted the Canoeing European Championships in 2012, the W ...
(through the Bardello).


Geography

Lake Maggiore is long, and wide, except at the bay opening westward between Pallanza and Stresa, where it is wide. It is the longest Italian lake, although Lake Garda has a greater area. Its mean height above the sea level is 193 metres; a deep lake, its bottom is almost everywhere below sea-level: at its deepest, 179 metres below. Its form is very sinuous so that there are few points from which any considerable part of its surface can be seen at a single glance. If this lessens the effect of the apparent size, it increases the variety of its scenery. While the upper end is completely alpine in character, the middle region lies between hills of gentler form, and the lower end advances to the verge of the plain of Lombardy. Lake Maggiore is the most westerly of the three great southern prealpine lakes, the others being Lake Como and Lake Garda. The lake basin has tectonic-glacial origins and its volume is . The lake has a surface area of about , a maximum length of (on a straight line) and, at its widest, is . Its main tributaries are the
Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...
, the Maggia (forming a very large delta), the Toce (by which it receives the outflow of Lake Orta) and the Tresa (which is the sole emissary of Lake Lugano). The rivers Verzasca,
Giona Giona may refer to: * Giona (given name) * Mount Giona ( el, Γκιώνα, link=no), a mountain in Phocis, Central Greece *Giona, Xanthi Giona ( el, Γκιώνα, previously known as Giouveiler) is a settlement in the Xanthi regional unit of Gree ...
, and Cannobino also flow into the lake. Its outlet is the Ticino which, in turn, joins the river Po just south-east of Pavia. The lake's jagged banks are surrounded by the Pennine and Lepontine Alps, and Lugano Prealps. Prominent peaks around the lake are the
Gridone The Gridone, Ghiridone or Monte Limidario is a mountain of the Lepontine Alps, overlooking Lake Maggiore near Brissago. At 2,188 metres above sea level, its summit straddles the border between Italy and Switzerland. The summit can be easily re ...
, Monte Tamaro,
Monte Nudo Monte Nudo is a mountain of Lombardy, Italy. It has an elevation of 1,237 metres. Administratively it belongs to the province of Varese. Etymology In Italian ''Nudo'' means ''Naked''; this comes from the lack of trees which characterized the m ...
and the Mottarone. The highest mountain overlooking Lake Maggiore is Monte Rosa (), located about west of it. The western bank is in
Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...
(provinces of Novara and Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola) and the eastern in Lombardy ( province of Varese), whereas the most northerly section extends into the canton of
Ticino Ticino (), sometimes Tessin (), officially the Republic and Canton of Ticino or less formally the Canton of Ticino,, informally ''Canton Ticino'' ; lmo, Canton Tesin ; german: Kanton Tessin ; french: Canton du Tessin ; rm, Chantun dal Tessin . ...
, where it constitutes its lowest point
above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as '' orthometric heights''. The ...
as well as that of Switzerland. The culminating point of the lake's drainage basin is the Grenzgipfel summit of Monte Rosa at above sea level.


Climate

Lake Maggiore weather is humid subtropical (''Cfa'' in the
Köppen climate classification The Köppen climate classification is one of the most widely used climate classification systems. It was first published by German-Russian climatologist Wladimir Köppen (1846–1940) in 1884, with several later modifications by Köppen, nota ...
). During winter, the lake helps to maintain a higher temperature in the surrounding region (since water releases heat energy more slowly than air). The temperatures are cooled down in summer by the breezes that blow on the water's surface, changing its colour. The area enjoys nearly 2300 hours of sunshine a year and an average annual temperature of . The water of the lake has a comfortable temperature of to in July and August. In winter snowfall is erratic and primarily affects the higher elevations. Rainfall is heaviest in May and lowest during the winter months.


Flora and fauna

The flora is strongly influenced by the lake basin, which has allowed the proliferation of typically Mediterranean plants, and also of plants native to the Atlantic areas favoured by the composition of the soil and the abundance of siliceous rocks. Lemons, olive trees and bay olive trees grow there. The spontaneous vegetation is composed of
yew Yew is a common name given to various species of trees. It is most prominently given to any of various coniferous trees and shrubs in the genus ''Taxus'': * European yew or common yew (''Taxus baccata'') * Pacific yew or western yew (''Taxus br ...
, holly and chestnut trees on the surrounding hills. In the lake two species of whitefish live, '' Coregonus'' and, less widespread, '' Coregonus lavaretus''. Both live in deep water and come ashore only during the spawning in early December. There are also perch, pike,
chub Chub is a common fish name. It pertains to any one of a number of ray-finned fish in several families and genera. In the UK, the term ''chub'' usually refers to the species ''Squalius cephalus''. In addition, see sea chub. In family Cyprinidae ...
, burbot, torpedo, eels and '' Alburnus arborella''. The lake is home to several species of nesting waterfowl, it also represents an important corridor, a place of rest and feeding for migrations. For example: common merganser, royal swan,
grebes Grebes () are aquatic diving birds in the order (biology), order Podicipediformes . Grebes are widely distributed freshwater birds, with some species also found in sea, marine habitats during Bird migration, migration and winter. Some flightless ...
, gulls, cormorants, ducks.


Towns and villages on the lake


Islands

*
Borromean Islands The Borromean Islands (It. ''Isole Borromee'') are a group of three small islands and two islets in the Italian part of Lago Maggiore, located in the western arm of the lake, between Verbania to the north and Stresa to the south. Together totalling ...
(three islands and two islets located between Verbania to the north and Stresa to the south) ** Isola Bella ** Isola Madre ** Isola dei Pescatori (or Isola Superiore) ** Isolino di San Giovanni (in front of Verbania) **
Scoglio della Malghera The Scoglio della Malghera is a small island belonging to the Borromean Islands of Lake Maggiore, one of the main subalpine lakes of northern Italy. It is located halfway between Isola Bella and Isola dei Pescatori, in the comune of Stresa Stre ...
(between Isola Bella and Isola Pescatori) * Brissago Islands (close to Brissago) ** San Pancrazio (or Grande Isola) ** Isolino (or Isola Piccola or Isola di Sant’Apollinare) * Castelli di Cannero (three small islands just off the shore from
Cannero Riviera Cannero Riviera ( àn-ne-ro in Western Lombard ''Càner''), is a ''comune'' (an Italian municipality) with a population of 973 and an area of in the Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola in the Italian region of Piedmont. The settlement is situated on ...
) * Isolino Partegora (in the gulf of Angera)


Sacro Monte di Ghiffa

The Sacred Mountain of Ghiffa is a
Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
devotional complex in the ''
comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces ('' province''). The can ...
'' of Ghiffa, (
Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...
, northern
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
), overlooking the Lake Maggiore. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, included in UNESCO World Heritage list.


Events

The Spirit of Woodstock Festival is an annual
open air festival Open or OPEN may refer to: Music * Open (band), Australian pop/rock band * The Open (band), English indie rock band * ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969 * ''Open'' (Gotthard album), 1999 * ''Open'' (Cowboy Junkies album), 2001 * ''Open'' (YF ...
at the end of July/beginning of August. It is organized in Armeno by the Mirapuri community.


History

The first archaeological findings around the lake belong to nomadic people living in the area in prehistoric types. The first settlements discovered date from the Copper Age. The area was later under the control of the Ligures, later replaced by the
Celts The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancien ...
. The latter was in turn conquered by the Romans, who called the lake ''Verbanus Lacus'' or ''Lacus Maximus''. After the fall of the
Western Roman Empire The Western Roman Empire comprised the western provinces of the Roman Empire at any time during which they were administered by a separate independent Imperial court; in particular, this term is used in historiography to describe the period fr ...
, the lake was under different domains. Most of the current settlements originated in the Middle Ages when the lake was under the Della Torre, Visconti, the Borromeo and Habsburg families. Methane was first discovered and isolated by Alessandro Volta as he analysed marsh gas from Lake Maggiore, between 1776 and 1778. In 1936, a
Bugatti Type 22 The Bugatti Type 13 was the first true Bugatti car. Production of the Type 13, and later Types 15, 17, 22, and 23, began with the company's founding in 1910 and lasted through 1920, with 435 examples produced. Most road cars used an eight-valve ...
Brescia Roadster, built 1925, was sunk in the lake by employees of
Zürich , neighboring_municipalities = Adliswil, Dübendorf, Fällanden, Kilchberg, Maur, Oberengstringen, Opfikon, Regensdorf, Rümlang, Schlieren, Stallikon, Uitikon, Urdorf, Wallisellen, Zollikon , twintowns = Kunming, San Francisco Zürich () i ...
architect Marco Schmucklerski, when Swiss customs officials investigated whether he had paid taxes on the car. The Bugatti was attached to an iron chain making it possible to recover it once the investigation was over, yet that never happened. When the chain corroded, the car sunk to the lake bed, where it was rediscovered on 18 August 1967 by local diver Ugo Pillon and became a favourite target for divers thereafter. When one of the divers, Damiano Tamagni, was killed in a hold-up on 1 February 2008, his friends from the
Ascona 300px, Ascona Ascona ( lmo, label= Ticinese, Scona ) is a municipality in the district of Locarno in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. It is located on the shore of Lake Maggiore. The town is a popular tourist destination and holds the yea ...
divers' club decided to lift and sell the car wreck to raise funds for a yet to be created foundation named after the victim. The remains of the Bugatti were recovered on 12 July 2009. The sale took place at the Retro Mobile classic car exhibition in Paris on 23 January 2010. It was sold for €260,500. In May 2021, a cable car collapsed near the lake, killing 14 people.


The Hotel Meina incident at Lake Maggiore

This incident is part of the Lake Maggiore massacres during WWII. Meina is a municipality located 77 kilometres (48 miles) northwest of Milan, on the southern shores of Lake Maggiore. The Hotel Meina was located north of the town of Meina and was owned by Alberto and Eugenia Behar, Sephardic Jews who had moved to Italy from Constantinople. In September 1943, an armistice was declared between Italy and the Allies. At that time, the Hotel Meina housed a number of Jewish guests, most of them escapees of the Nazi occupation of Greece. The area around Lake Maggiore was not under Allied control but was occupied by the German Waffen-SS, specifically the infamous '' Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler''. Captain Hans Krüger, who directed operations in Meina and the surrounding villages, was in charge of locating the Jews in that area and was responsible for the Lake Maggiore massacres in which approximately 54 Jews were murdered. On the night of 22 September 1943, most of the Jewish residents of the Hotel Meina were executed and their bodies were thrown into Lake Maggiore. The Fernandez-Diaz family, a family of Greek Sephardic Jews from Thessaloniki, barricaded themselves in one of the fourth-floor hotel rooms. It took an extra day for the Germans to reach and execute them. The family included three young children whose lives were not spared despite pleas from older family members. Among those killed were Dino Fernandez-Diaz (76 years old), Pierre Fernandez-Diaz (46), Liliane (Scialom) Fernandez-Diaz (36), Jean Fernandez-Diaz (17), Robert Fernandez-Diaz (13), Blanchette Fernandez-Diaz (12), Marco Mosseri (55), Ester Botton (52), Giacomo Renato Mosseri (22), Odette Uziel (19), Raoul Torres (48), Valerie Nahoum Torres (49), and Daniele Modiano (51). In total, sixteen Jewish residents of the hotel were executed. Its owners, the Behar family, survived due to the efforts of the Turkish consulate. The Italian police report on the Meina massacre was lost but resurfaced in 1994, along with hundreds of other files of war crimes committed post-armistice by Germans who still occupied or were retreating from Italian soil. These files had been hidden in a wooden cabinet, the so-called "
cabinet of shame The Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi war crimes archive or armoire of shame ( it, armadio della vergogna) is a wooden cabinet discovered in 1994 inside a large storage room in Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi, Rome which, at the time, housed the chancellery of the military a ...
", discovered in a storeroom of the military prosecutor's headquarters. Germany does not extradite its citizens convicted of war crimes in other countries. Those responsible for the Meina massacre were tried at home in Germany in 1968, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. However, in 1970, the German Supreme Court declared the statute of limitations for those particular war crimes to have expired, and the prisoners were released.


References in literature and popular culture

Lake Maggiore is featured in American writer
Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
's novel '' A Farewell to Arms''. The protagonist (Frederic Henry) and his lover (Catherine Barkley) are forced to cross the transnational border within the lake in a row boat to escape Italian carabinieri. It also appeared as the location of a fictional racetrack in the racing game '' Gran Turismo Sport'' and ''
Gran Turismo 7 ''Gran Turismo 7'' is a racing simulation video game developed by Polyphony Digital and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The game is the eighth mainline installment in the ''Gran Turismo (series), Gran Turismo'' series. The game was ...
''. Die Flippers, a German Schlager group wrote a song called "Lago Maggiore" that appears on their 1990 album
Sieben Tage Sonnenschein ''Sieben Tage Sonnenschein'' (''Seven Days of Sunshine'') is the twentieth studio album released by German Schlager group Die Flippers. The single "Sieben Tage" was a huge success, and the album went gold Gold is a chemical element with th ...
.


Sources


External links

*
CIPAIS Commissione Internazionale per la Protezione delle Acque Italo-Svizzere
limnologic reports on the Lake Maggiore and Lake Lugano
Official website of Ascona-Locarno Tourism
{{DEFAULTSORT:Maggiore, Lake International lakes of Europe Italy–Switzerland border Lakes of Lombardy Lakes of Piedmont Lakes of the Swiss Alps Lakes of Ticino Lepontine Alps Province of Novara Province of Varese Province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola Subalpine lakes of Italy Waterways of Italy