– Il Lago d’Orta ha fatto innamorare tanti personaggi famosi, tra cui il filosofo Friedrich Nietzsche, il quale nei primi giorni del maggio 1882 sali sul Sacro Montein compagnia di Lou Andreas Salomè. Tra il tormentato pensatore e la brillante ragazza russa vi fu, nell’incanto del luogo, un incerto momento di tenerezza che alcuni biografi hanno poi chiamato l”’idillio di Orta”.
You know where you are with Italy: spag bol; olive overcoats and tan brogues; nuns.
But it still has surprises in store, and one of them is Lake Orta, a secret part of this boot-shaped country, right near the top of the zip.
It’s got everything: there’s culture, sculpture, highland, island, mountains and fountains. It may not be the best-known body of water in the Italian lake district – that accolade probably goes to Lake Como, where film stars such as George Clooney and other hunks in trunks hang out – but it is gorgeous.
It started as a bet among three wine-happy men, one of whom was my husband. But I don’t blame them, really.
The bewitching beauty of Orta, a secluded jewel of a lake just a mile wide and to the west of Maggiore, tucked in the Italian Lakes District, is well chronicled: Friedrich Nietzsche, Honoré de Balzac and Robert Browning all wrote about how sublimely gorgeous the lake and its surroundings were (Balzac called Orta’s island “a spot coyly hidden and left to nature, a wild garden”).
Was it any wonder we were drawn in, too?
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.
The Italian Lakes haven’t given up all their treasures to tourists quite yet. Our writer reveals Orta, the enchanting lake the Milanese have kept to themselves.