Lake Maggiore
Lake Maggiore, the Verbano of the ancients, is the second largest of Italy's subalpine lakes: about 212 square kilometres in surface area, 65 kilometres long and no more than 12 kilometres wide[1]. It is divided by both an internal and an international border: the boundary between Piemonte and Lombardy runs down the middle of the lake, while its northern tip belongs to Switzerland[1]. About 80 per cent of the surface is Italian, and the drainage basin is split almost evenly between Italy (3,229 square kilometres, in Piemonte and Lombardy) and Switzerland (3,370)[2]. The western shore, from Arona to Cannobio, lies in Piemonte: it is the lake of the province of Novara and of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, with Verbania, Stresa and the Borromean Islands.
Name and shape
The Romans called it Verbanus lacus; the name «Maggiore» comes from its being the largest of the neighbouring lakes, in the so-called region of the three lakes[3]. The basin has a mixed tectonic and glacial origin, and is a cryptodepression: its floor lies below sea level[1]. The average depth is about 200 metres, the maximum 372 metres off Ghiffa[1]; the 1934 entry of the Enciclopedia Italiana placed that point «between Caldè and Ghiffa» and counted seven islands in all, with a shoreline of 170 kilometres[3].
The main inflows are the Ticino, which enters from the north, and the Toce, which comes down from the Ossola valley and empties into the broad gulf between Pallanza and Baveno[1]. The only outflow is again the Ticino, which leaves at the southern end and carries the waters toward the Po[1]. In the Toce gulf, between Stresa and Pallanza, lie the four Borromean Islands: Isola Bella, Isola Madre, Isola dei Pescatori and Isola di San Giovanni[4].
From the Borromeo to the Savoy
The political history of the western shore is largely the history of one family. At Arona, an ancient Roman military post, after the counts of Stazzona, the archbishops of Milan and the Visconti, came the Borromeo, who in 1445 made it a county[5]. Two and a half kilometres from the town centre, beside the church that holds the room where San Carlo Borromeo was born, rebuilt after the destruction of the castle, stands the «San Carlone», the 23-metre copper statue of the saint, designed by Giovan Battista Crespi and completed in 1694[5]. In the gulf, the same family began around 1630 the great palace of Isola Bella, with its art collection and gardens[4].
The link joining the lake to Turin dates from the mid-eighteenth century: under the 1743 Treaty of Worms, Arona passed to the Kingdom of Sardinia[5], together with the Alto Novarese, which the treaty ceded to the House of Savoy along with the Vigevanasco and the Oltrepò Pavese[6]. This is the origin of the border that still splits the lake between two regions today[1].
Boats, hotels and diplomacy
Public passenger navigation began in 1826-1827 with two steamships run by the Lombardo-Sardo-Ticinese company: the «Verbano» sailed on Lake Maggiore, the «Lario» on Lake Como[7]. The steamship «Piemonte» dates from 1904 and is still in service; the first car ferry appeared in 1933[7]. Private companies ran the service until 1948, when war damage drove them out; the State guaranteed the routes, and in 1957 the Ministry of Transport set up the Gestione Governativa, which today operates about 99 vessels on Lakes Maggiore, Garda and Como and carries more than 11 million passengers a year[7].
Already in the 1930s the Enciclopedia Italiana described a «very mild» climate, with olives, citrons, lemons and oranges grown in sheltered spots such as Meina, Pallanza, Stresa and Cannero, and an economy built on the hotel trade, the hat-making of Intra and the majolica of Laveno[3]. Fishing too was a serious business: in 1929 the lake yielded 321,800 kilograms of fish, including trout, whitefish, char and pike[3], and the same entry recorded a record catch:
«near Ascona one was caught measuring a metre and a half and weighing over 22 kilograms»
Stresa, at the foot of the Mottarone, meanwhile became an international tourist destination[8]. At the Palazzo Borromeo, from 11 to 14 April 1935, the conference was held between Mussolini, the Frenchmen Flandin and Laval, and the Britons MacDonald and Simon; according to Treccani it was the war in Ethiopia that wrecked what came to be called the «Stresa Front»[8]. On the other side of the gulf, Intra and Pallanza, set on either side of the Castagnola headland, were merged into the municipality of Verbania, with an industry already established in the early nineteenth century: textile fibres, paper, food[9].
Floods and droughts
The level of the lake depends on the spring and autumn rains and on the melting of the snows[3]. Major floods have left their mark: in 1868 and 1872, the Enciclopedia Italiana noted, «the rise was about 7 metres above the low-water mark»[3]. In mid-November 2014, after days of continuous rain, the level rose two metres within a few days and the lake overflowed at Verbania, flooding the lakefront as far as the town hall of Pallanza; in the same episode Lake Orta also overflowed at Omegna[10].
The opposite problem has become frequent in recent years. In August 2026 the lake was close to record lows, at 192.5 metres above sea level against an average of 193.6; some boat stops and routes had been cut and the maximum ferry load reduced[11]. In those days, on a proposal from the Italian-Swiss bilateral body for regulating the lake's levels, convened urgently by the Ministry of the Environment, the flow of the Tresa, the roughly 13-kilometre river linking Lake Lugano to Lake Maggiore, was raised at Ponte Tresa from 3 to 8 cubic metres per second, for an initial period of nine days[11]. The lake's level in fact governs the Ticino, and through the Ticino the Po and the rice-growing lands downstream[11].
Today
Protection of the waters is entrusted, on the scientific and diplomatic side, to the International Commission for the Protection of Italian-Swiss Waters (CIPAIS), which deals with pollution and any alteration of Lake Maggiore and Lake Lugano and is based in Turin, in Piazza Piemonte[2]. The same commission measures Lake Maggiore at 212 square kilometres, with a maximum depth of 370 metres[2].
Pages linking here
Related articles: Borromean Islands, Lake Orta, Verbania