The 39 Most Beautiful Lakes in the World

Still water that mirrors the sky — from crater lakes and glacier-fed turquoise to some of the oldest and deepest waters on the planet. Here are the lakes of the atlas, each with an honest guide to reaching it.

Banff & Moraine Lake

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

The turquoise glacial lakes of the Canadian Rockies — Moraine Lake beneath the Valley of the Ten Peaks and nearby Lake Louise — where glacier-ground rock flour turns the water an electric blue-green beneath snow-capped mountains.

Lake North America

Crater Lake

Oregon, USA

The deepest lake in the United States — a caldera of astonishing, luminous blue, formed when a great volcano collapsed and filled with nothing but rain and snow.

Lake North America

Jiuzhaigou

Sichuan Province, China

A valley of impossibly blue and turquoise lakes, terraced waterfalls, and travertine pools stepping down from snow peaks on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

Lake East Asia

Lake Baikal

Siberia, Russia

The deepest and oldest lake on Earth — a vast Siberian sea holding a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water, its waters so clear you can see 40 metres down, and freezing each winter into sheets of turquoise ice.

Lake East Asia

Lake Natron

Arusha Region, northern Tanzania

A caustic soda lake that burns blood-red with salt-loving microbes — lethal to most life, yet the single most important breeding ground on Earth for lesser flamingos.

Lake Africa

Pangong Tso

Ladakh, India

A vast high-altitude lake on the Tibetan Plateau whose waters shift through unearthly blues and greens beneath the bare, colossal mountains of Ladakh at over 4,300 metres.

Lake South Asia

Plitvice Lakes

Lika, central Croatia

A staircase of sixteen turquoise lakes tumbling one into the next over natural travertine dams and countless waterfalls, threaded by boardwalks through lush forest — Croatia's oldest and most beloved national park.

Lake Europe

Inle Lake

Shan State, Myanmar

A vast, shallow highland lake in the Shan hills where fishermen row standing on one leg, whole villages stand on stilts, and gardens float on the water itself.

Lake Southeast Asia

Issyk-Kul

Issyk-Kul Region, Tian Shan, Kyrgyzstan

A vast, slightly saline mountain lake ringed by the snow peaks of the Tian Shan — the world's second-largest alpine lake, 182 kilometres long, and warm enough that it never freezes despite sitting at 1,607 metres.

Lake Central Asia

Kayangan Lake, Coron

Coron Island, Palawan, Philippines

Often called the cleanest lake in the Philippines — a jewel-clear brackish lake cradled by limestone cliffs on Coron Island, reached by a short climb over a saddle with one of the country's most photographed viewpoints.

Lake Southeast Asia

Kelimutu

Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

A volcano on the island of Flores crowned by three crater lakes that change colour independently and unpredictably — turquoise, green, black, brown, or red — each tied in local belief to the resting place of departed souls.

Lake Southeast Asia

Killarney National Park

County Kerry, Ireland

Ireland's first national park — a storied landscape of lakes, ancient oak woods and mountains around Killarney, home to the country's only wild red deer herd and its largest surviving native forest.

Lake Europe

Königssee

Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany

A deep, emerald, fjord-like lake hemmed by sheer alpine cliffs in Berchtesgaden National Park — so clean that only silent electric boats are allowed to cross it.

Lake Europe

Laguna Colorada

Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve, Sur Lípez, Potosí Department, southwestern Bolivia

A shallow salt lake on the Bolivian Altiplano at 4,278 m whose water runs brick-red with algae and sediment, streaked with white borax islands and dotted with thousands of flamingos.

Lake Latin America

Lake Assal

Afar Triangle, western Djibouti

The lowest point on land in Africa — a lake 155 metres below sea level with no outlet, so saline that the salt has crystallised into a plain sixty metres deep along its western shore.

Lake Africa

Lake Atitlán

Sololá, southwestern Guatemala highlands

A deep blue volcanic lake cradled in a highland caldera and ringed by three perfect volcanic cones and Maya villages — long called one of the most beautiful lakes on Earth.

Lake Latin America

Lake Bled

Upper Carniola, Slovenia

A serene glacial lake with a tiny church-topped island at its heart, cupped beneath a clifftop castle and the peaks of the Julian Alps — one of the most picture-perfect scenes in Europe.

Lake Europe

Lake Como

Lombardy, northern Italy

A deep, inverted-Y-shaped glacial lake beneath the southern Alps, ringed by steep wooded mountains, cliff-clinging villages, and centuries of grand lakeside villas.

Lake Europe

Lake Kivu

Rwanda–DR Congo border (Western Rwanda)

A deep, calm African Great Lake cradled in the rift between Rwanda and the Congo — ringed by terraced green hills and holding one of the world's most unusual reserves of dissolved gas.

Lake Africa

Lake Louise

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

A glacier-fed lake of improbable turquoise beneath the Victoria Glacier, high in Banff National Park — the postcard of the Canadian Rockies.

Lake North America

Lake Lucerne

Central Switzerland (cantons of Lucerne, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schwyz, Uri)

A many-armed alpine lake at the heart of Switzerland — 114 square kilometres of deep blue-green water winding between the peaks of Rigi, Pilatus, and the Uri Alps, ringed by lakeside towns and the meadow where the Swiss Confederation was born.

Lake Europe

Lake Malawi

Malawi, Mozambique & Tanzania

A vast Rift Valley lake holding more fish species than any other lake on Earth — hundreds of brilliantly coloured cichlids found nowhere else, in water clear as glass.

Lake Africa

Lake Mývatn

Northeast Iceland, near Akureyri

A shallow, volcanic lake ringed by craters, lava fields and steaming ground — one of Europe's richest waterfowl habitats, alive with ducks in summer and framed by pseudocraters, twisted lava pillars and geothermal steam.

Lake Europe

Lake Nakuru

Great Rift Valley, central Kenya

A shallow soda lake in Kenya's Rift Valley, famous for shimmering pink shorelines of flamingos and as a stronghold sanctuary for both black and white rhinos.

Lake Africa

Lake Ohrid

Southwestern North Macedonia, on the border with Albania

One of the oldest lakes in the world — deep, clear water on the North Macedonia–Albania border, home to more than 200 species found nowhere else.

Lake Europe

Lake Sebu & the Seven Falls

South Cotabato, Mindanao, Philippines

A serene highland lake wreathed in morning mist, feeding a chain of seven waterfalls through the mountains — the ancestral home of the T'boli people and one of Mindanao's most soulful landscapes.

Lake Southeast Asia

Lake Tekapo (Takapō)

Mackenzie Basin, Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand

A glacier-fed turquoise lake in the Mackenzie Basin, at the heart of the Aoraki Mackenzie International Dark Sky Reserve — milky blue water by day and some of the clearest night skies on Earth.

Lake Oceania

Lake Titicaca

Peru–Bolivia border, Andes

The highest large navigable lake on Earth — a vast, luminous inland sea at 3,812 metres in the Andes, ringed by snow peaks and dotted with floating reed islands.

Lake Latin America

Morskie Oko

Tatra National Park, Lesser Poland, Poland

The largest and most beloved lake of the Polish Tatras — a clear alpine tarn cradled beneath the sheer Mięguszowieckie peaks, its name, the 'Eye of the Sea', matched by water clear enough to see many metres down.

Lake Europe

Oeschinen Lake

Kandersteg, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

A turquoise mountain lake cupped beneath the snow-streaked Blüemlisalp peaks — part of the UNESCO Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage area, reached by gondola and a short walk high above Kandersteg.

Lake Europe

Peyto Lake

Bow Summit, Icefields Parkway, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

A glacier-fed lake of startling turquoise in a forested valley below Bow Summit, the highest point on the Icefields Parkway — one of the most photographed views in the Canadian Rockies.

Lake North America

Phewa Lake

Pokhara, central Nepal

Nepal's second-largest lake, about 4 km² of open water on the edge of Pokhara, a short flight or a 6–8 hour drive from Kathmandu. Rent a rowing boat from Lakeside to see Machapuchare and the Annapurna range reflected in the lake. October–November and March–April have the clearest skies.

Lake South Asia

Quilotoa

Cotopaxi Province, Ecuadorian Andes

A green crater lake inside a 3 km-wide volcanic caldera high in the Ecuadorian Andes — reached by walking down from the rim.

Lake Latin America

Siwa Oasis

Western Desert, near the Libyan border, Egypt

A remote desert oasis of palm groves, freshwater springs, and turquoise salt lakes in Egypt's far west — an ancient island of green ringed by the dunes of the Great Sand Sea.

Lake Africa

Song-Köl

Naryn, central Kyrgyzstan

A vast alpine lake on a high Tian Shan plateau, ringed by summer pastures where nomadic herders raise their yurts — a serene, roadless world of grass, water, and sky at 3,000 metres.

Lake Central Asia

The Dead Sea

Jordan Rift Valley, Jordan / Israel / West Bank

The lowest point on the surface of the Earth — a hypersaline lake so dense with salt and minerals that swimmers float effortlessly, cradled in the desert far below sea level.

Lake Middle East

The Lake District

Cumbria, North West England, United Kingdom

England's largest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape — a compact country of glacier-carved fells, ribbon lakes and stone-walled valleys that shaped English ideas of the picturesque.

Lake Europe

The Seven Rila Lakes

Rila National Park, Rila Mountains, southwestern Bulgaria

Seven glacial tarns arranged one above the other on a mountain staircase between 2,100 and 2,500 metres, each named for the shape the ice left it in — the Eye, the Kidney, the Tear, the Twin.

Lake Europe

Tonlé Sap

Central Cambodia, near Siem Reap

Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake — a vast, life-giving body of water that swells enormously each monsoon when its own river reverses course and flows backwards.

Lake Southeast Asia