Lake Maggiore: Specifically because of the richness and beauty of its flowers and plants from around the world and its exceptionally mild climate, the land area around Lake Maggiore has been nicknamed "The Garden of Europe." Always a stage for important events, from medieval times to the Renaissance, until the struggle against Austria, the territories between the two lakes were the domain of powerful Italian families. First the Visconti family, then the Borromeo family. They constantly gathered learned, sophisticated people such as artists and architects around themselves thereby leaving a rich heritage of culture and art for their descendants.

Lake Orta: God's watercolor, appears to have been painted on a backcloth of silk, with its sacred mountain at its back, its grand, imposing slopes flanked by closed palatial houses, the quiet piazzas and demure facades behind the manes of the horse-chestnut trees, facing the island of San Giulio, similar to Dante's ethereal purgatory, it exists between water and sky. This is the way Piero Chiara, known as the author of the lakes, praised his lake and Orta's silence, a discreet silence upon which its people weaved their ancient legends.