Less visited than Como and Maggiore is Lake Orta, so lovely the Milanese are a little reluctant to share it, writes Edward Docx.
There is a code of silence that surrounds Lake Orta in northern Italy. Visitors are reluctant to tell others about its beauty for fear of increasing – well, the number of visitors.
Indeed, it is astonishing how few people, even Italians, know about the place and it is telling that the Milanese call it La Cenerentola (Cinderella) because they have long considered it the secretly superior sibling to the larger, money-blighted lakes of Como and Maggiore.