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Italy's Lake Country
Café lights wink on in Orta San Giulio on the shore of Lake Orta, the westernmost of Italy’s northern lakes.
 
TRAVELER Magazine Italy's Lake Country
History and beauty mingle in the regions of Piedmont and Lombardy, in Italy’s far north. Glaciers retreating after the last ice age left behind craggy mountains, isolated valleys, and—most famously—deep, narrow lakes that have charmed visitors since the aristocrats of imperial Rome built villas along their shores.

The towns and resorts that ring the lakes manage to combine Italian sensuality with the efficiency of their northern neighbor Switzerland. Here are posh hotels and spas, remote hamlets, lakeside promenades, and lonely mountain trails.

A caprice of geography and prevailing winds produces a temperate climate where palm trees grow in the shadow of the snowcapped Alps.

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© 1997 National Geographic Society.   All rights reserved.   Photograph by Macduff Everton.
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