Orta or Maggiore: two lakes, one mountain in between

Driving times measured with OSRM on 6 October 2026, in free-flowing traffic: no queues on the ring road, no roadworks, no stops¹. They are a minimum, not a promise. Starting points: Piazza del Duomo in Milan and Malpensa Terminal 1; destinations: the centre of each town.

Orta and Stresa are almost level from Milan (75 min against 73 min): the two routes share the A8 and the branch towards Gattico, then part on the A26. From Malpensa Stresa is two minutes closer. Como, from Milan, is the closest of all; Bellagio and Sirmione are further than Orta.

All the times to the sixteen places on Lake Orta, from eleven cities, are in the section Distances.

Lake Orta is 12.55 km long and at most 1.85 km wide²: from almost every house on the shore you can see the one opposite. Lake Maggiore is Italy's second-largest lake by surface area³.

Lake Orta also has a hydrographic peculiarity: its outflow leaves from the northern end, a unique case among the Italian subalpine lakes according to the CNR¹¹. Its waters still reach Lake Maggiore, through the Strona and the Toce.

Bathing. Lake Orta has 16 official monitoring points. In the 2024 season, the latest classified in the data reported to the European Environment Agency, 10 were rated excellent, 4 good and 2 sufficient; the two sufficient ones are beaches in Omegna, at the northern end (Bagnella and the sports centre lido)⁴.

State of the lake. For 2020–2022 ARPA Piemonte classified Lake Orta's ecological status as «good», one of only two Piedmont lakes in that class, while its chemical status was «not good» because the annual average for PFOS was exceeded⁵. For 2023–2025 the classification was still being assessed in July 2026⁶.

The result weighs more when you remember the history: for decades industrial discharges had made Lake Orta an acidic lake, restored with a limestone treatment between 1989 and 1990¹¹.

Lake Maggiore. We have not extracted the bathing classes of Lake Maggiore's points for this edition: this is why we do not write which of the two lakes is «cleaner».

The Mottarone, 1,491 m at the top cable car station⁸, is the mountain between the two lakes. The Stresa–Alpino–Mottarone cable car has been out of service since the accident of 23 May 2021, in which 14 people died. In November 2023 the Ministry of Tourism, the Region and the Municipality of Stresa signed a €15 million agreement for a new system, with reopening planned for summer 2025⁹.

That date has passed: on the fifth anniversary, 23 May 2026, the cable car was still out of service⁷, and the Stresa tourist office states that it is closed, without giving a reopening date⁸. Whether work is under way in October 2026 we have not been able to check.

For Lake Orta we have the OMI values of thirteen municipalities, zone by zone¹⁰. The highest is the Orta San Giulio lakefront with the island: standard homes 2,050–2,950 €/m², villas 2,100–3,000 €/m² (2nd half of 2025). The full picture is in the guide Lake Orta property prices.

For Lake Maggiore (Stresa, Baveno, Verbania, Arona, the Lombard shore) we have not extracted the values: a price comparison between the two lakes would require the same extraction, with the same half-year and the same types. Until we have done it, we do not write that Lake Orta costs less or more than Lake Maggiore.

The same goes for the summer crowds: we have no comparable figure for tourist numbers on the two lakes, and we do not replace it with an impression.

Lake Orta suits you if…

• you want a small lake, where the opposite shore is part of the view from home;
• being 75 min from Milan and 54 min from Malpensa, without traffic, is enough for you;
• you are looking for a lake with «good» ecological status and mostly excellent bathing water, knowing about the PFOS.

Lake Maggiore suits you if…

• you want a large lake, with wide horizons;
• you need more services and more lake connections than Lake Orta offers (which we have not measured here);
• you accept that this guide's figures on Lake Maggiore are less complete.