Lago di Misurina
Lago di Misurina Site Features
Last updated on September 10, 2026Site Features
The reflection
Still water with the Sorapiss group in it, best in the early morning before any wind. This is the image the lake is known for and it is genuinely worth the early start.
The lakeside walk
A level path of about two kilometres runs right round the shore -- easy, short, and the best way to see the mountains change as you move.
The asthma institute
The Istituto Pio XII on the shore, the only centre of its kind in Italy, and the reason the lake is protected from certain kinds of development.
The 1956 Olympic connection
Speed skating was held on this ice -- the last Games ever to do so on a natural surface.
Landscape
The lake lies at 1,754 metres in a high basin surrounded by three of the great Dolomite groups: the Sorapiss to the south, the Cadini di Misurina to the west, and the approaches to the Tre Cime to the north.
It is shallow, roughly two and a half kilometres around, and takes its colour from the sky rather than from depth.
The surrounding slopes are spruce and larch forest up to the treeline, giving way to scree and bare rock above.
The air is the landscape's least visible feature and its most consequential: dry, thin and still, and the reason the asthma institute is here rather than anywhere else.