Lago di Braies

The Pragser Wildsee is one of the Dolomites' best-known lakes: a green-and-blue sheet of water at almost 1,500 metres, walled in by the Croda del Becco and marked by a boathouse on stilts.

Why it matters

South Tyrol's tourism board calls Lake Braies the "Pearl of the Dolomites" and its most famous lake, an icon and a much-loved photographic subject long before the television series Un passo dal cielo carried it to a mass audience. The lake sits at the foot of the Braies valley, a side branch of the Pustertal, at an altitude of almost 1,500 metres, with the Seekofel — Croda del Becco in Italian — rising about 2,800 m directly behind it. Administratively it belongs to a protected landscape of the first order: the Province of Bolzano's park portal places the lake inside the Fanes-Senes-Braies nature park, whose karst plateaus and lakes form part of the Natura 2000 network and of the Dolomites UNESCO World Heritage area. The lake's popularity has brought tensions between tourism and protection of its sensitive ecosystem.

What to notice

A stilted timber boathouse marks the shore. The small lakeside chapel, built in 1904, is dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows. Higher in the valley, a themed trail named after Viktor Wolf Edler von Glanvell recalls the pioneer of alpinism in the Prags Dolomites. Larches turn gold in autumn, and by early winter the lake can freeze over.

Context and history

The lake's touristic story begins with the alpine pioneers: the Glanvell trail honours a figure the valley portal credits as a developer of the Prags Dolomites, part of the same late-nineteenth-century wave that opened the neighbouring Dolomite groups. The chapel of 1904 marks the arrival of organised hospitality on the shore. Mass fame came later — reinforced, the regional board notes, by television — and by the mid-2010s summer traffic had become a source of tension for the narrow valley and its residents. The lake's story reflects the challenge of balancing tourism with protection of a sensitive ecosystem.