The best-known Misurina story is a folk tale: a spoiled princess, her giant father Sorapiss turned to stone, and a lake made of his tears. The recorded history is just as eventful: a grand hotel from the 1890s, a First World War command post, a children's asthma centre, and Olympic speed skating on the ice in 1956.
For a lake about 2.6 km round, Misurina has a lot of story attached to it. There is a legend that most Italian tourism sites retell, a luxury hotel, a royal visit, a war fought on the mountain next door, and an Olympic race track laid on the ice. This page covers the legend first, then the history, in order.
The story goes like this. Long ago the land between the Tofane, the Antelao, the Marmarole and the Tre Cime was ruled by a giant king, Sorapiss. He had one daughter, Misurina, whom he spoiled completely.
Misurina heard that the fairy of Monte Cristallo owned a magic mirror, and she wanted it. The fairy agreed to give it up on one condition: Sorapiss must turn into a mountain, so that his shadow would shade her garden. Sorapiss could refuse his daughter nothing. He agreed.
As he turned to stone, his hair became forests and his wrinkles became crevasses. Misurina, sitting on his shoulder, lost her balance and fell to her death. The petrified king wept, and his tears filled the valley below to make the lake that carries her name. In some tellings, fragments of the broken mirror give the water its colours. The mountain to the south of the lake is still called Sorapiss.
Versions differ on the details. Some have the giant’s tears forming an unnamed lake. In Gillian Price’s Cicerone walking guide to the Dolomites, it is Misurina’s own tears that form Lago di Sorapis, the lake at the foot of the mountain, rather than her father’s forming Lake Misurina. A second, unrelated tale tells of a Venetian merchant’s daughter sent to the mountains to escape a prophecy.
Nobody seems to know. None of the Italian versions we checked name a book, a collector or a date. The earliest dated version we could confirm is Claudio Baglioni’s 1975 song “Il lago di Misurina”, on the album Sabato pomeriggio, which made the dark version of the story famous. That proves the tale existed by 1975, not where it came from. Treat it as a local folk tale, retold many ways, rather than an ancient legend with a known source.
The large building on the south shore, with the Sorapiss behind it, is the one in most photos of the lake. It started life as a luxury hotel.
A partnership of investors built the Grand Hotel Misurina between 1896 and 1899, and it opened in 1899. According to Italy’s heritage trust FAI, it had running water and electricity on every floor, a water-powered lift, and reading, music and painting rooms.
In July 1900 Queen Margherita of Savoy stayed for about a month, soon after the assassination of her husband, King Umberto I. She arrived with eight carriages and around a hundred attendants. The hotel was renamed the Grand Hotel Savoia and became a summer residence of the royal family.
In the First World War the hotel housed the Italian military command for the fighting on Monte Piana, and it lost furniture and suffered damage. After the war it was restored as the Grand Hotel delle Alpi e Misurina, and it closed as a hotel in 1940.
In 1949 the Diocese of Parma bought the building, according to FAI (Wikipedia gives 1950), and named it after Pope Pius XII. After the Second World War it first took in children with tuberculosis, then became a specialist respiratory centre for children with asthma. FAI describes it as the only centre in Italy for mountain treatment of children’s respiratory disease, and a 2016 report in Focus called it one of three such high-altitude centres in Europe. Focus put the benefit down to the altitude, with cleaner air and fewer allergens, combined with continuous clinical care.
Falling patient numbers and rising costs closed the institute in December 2022. The building has stood empty since, apart from routine maintenance. We have not found any confirmed plan for its future.
The hotel now trading as the Grand Hotel Misurina is a different, newer building on the north shore, at Via Monte Piana 21. If you book it, you are not staying in the historic hotel. Our guide to Lake Misurina hotels covers it and the other places to stay around the lake.
For four centuries Misurina sat close to a frontier. The bridge at Ponte della Marogna, on the road from Carbonin, marked a state border from 1511 to 1918, with the Venetian (later Italian) side to the south and Tyrol to the north.
When Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary on 24 May 1915, the front ran across Monte Piana, the flat-topped mountain just north of the lake. Austrian troops held the north summit and Italian troops the south, and they fought over it for about two and a half years, until the Italians withdrew on 3 November 1917. The front also ran through the Tre Cime, which stayed on the border until 1919.
Today Monte Piana is an open-air museum of trenches and tunnels, set up from 1977 on the initiative of former Austrian officer Walther Schaumann, with a small museum at Rifugio Bosi (2,205 m). The road up is closed to private cars. In 2026 a jeep shuttle ran from the Genzianella restaurant in Misurina from 1 June to 31 October, at €25 return (checked October 2026). Our Monte Piana guide has more on visiting it.
When Cortina d’Ampezzo hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, the speed skating went to Misurina. The Pista di Misurina was a natural-ice rink on the frozen lake, used from 28 to 31 January 1956 for the four men’s events. There was no women’s speed skating at these Games.
Swedish expert Gösta Nilsson designed the track. According to Olympedia, it was laid on a large floe of ice, with a channel about 2 m wide cut through the ice around it so that cracks would not spread to the track. The mountains sheltered it from the wind, and the altitude made it fast.
The results, from Olympedia:
| Event | Date | Gold |
|---|---|---|
| 500 m | 28 January | Yevgeny Grishin (Soviet Union) |
| 5,000 m | 29 January | Boris Shilkov (Soviet Union) |
| 1,500 m | 30 January | Yevgeny Grishin and Yury Mikhaylov (Soviet Union), tied |
| 10,000 m | 31 January | Sigvard Ericsson (Sweden) |
Grishin had skated a 500 m world record of 40.2 seconds on the same rink about six days earlier, at a pre-Olympic race, and equalled it to win gold. In the 1,500 m, he and Mikhaylov both clocked 2:08.6, a world record, and shared the gold, so no silver was awarded.
Four years later, at Squaw Valley in 1960, Olympic speed skating moved to artificial ice. That makes Misurina in 1956 the last Olympic speed skating on natural ice. When the Winter Olympics returned to Cortina in February 2026, seventy years later, we found no role for Misurina.
The lake and its neighbours have been film sets. In May 2017 the crew of Solo: A Star Wars Story spent about a week in the Dolomites with its base camp at Misurina, filming on Monte Piana and taking panoramic shots of the Tre Cime. According to the official Auronzo tourism site, scenes from Jurassic World Dominion (2022) were filmed at Lago d’Antorno, with the dinosaur added later. The Rai TV drama Un passo dal cielo used Lago d’Antorno in its fifth season and Lake Misurina in its sixth.
If the lake looks lower than in old photos, it is. The south shore is held by a concrete retaining wall with a small sluice that lets water out into the Ansiei. In 2022 a leak was found in that wall, near the outflow, under the Col de Varda chairlift car park. A first repair, costing about €70,000, failed. By November 2023 the level had dropped by more than 70 cm, according to the regional paper Il Dolomiti.
The figures for summer 2026 depend on who you ask. On 21 July 2026 the council’s delegate for the lake, Nicola Bombassei, said the water was 84 cm below the spillway and blamed a winter with little snow. Earlier that month, opposition councillor and former mayor Tatiana Pais Becher had said about 2 m of water was missing, that algae were spreading and that signs banning boat hire had gone up. Mayor Dario Vecellio Galeno has said a proper repair needs about €2 million, and no funding had been confirmed.
Rowing and pedal boats have been hired out on the lake in past summers. Whether they run on your visit depends on the water level, so ask locally. For the walk around the lake, Lake Antorno and what to see today, start with our Lake Misurina guide, and for planning your trip see how to get to Lake Misurina. The bigger hike above the lake is in our Tre Cime di Lavaredo guide, and day trips that stop here are on our tours page.
9 hours
The most-reviewed Misurina day trip from Venice: a small-group minivan run via Pieve di Cadore and the Auronzo dam to a lunch stop of over two hours at the lake, then an hour in Cortina.
from$166
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Gives the lake the longest slot of any Venice day trip, about three hours, in a Mercedes van capped at eight guests, with Cortina before and Lake Auronzo after.
from$207
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The cheapest way to the lake from Venice: a coach day that crosses the Tre Croci pass from Cortina to give you two hours at Misurina, with a last stop on the Auronzo dam.
from$111
Check availabilityPrices and ratings were taken from GetYourGuide and can change. Booking through these links supports this site at no extra cost to you.
In the common version, Misurina is the spoiled daughter of the giant King Sorapiss. She demands a magic mirror from the fairy of Monte Cristallo, whose price is that Sorapiss becomes a mountain. As he turns to stone, Misurina falls from his shoulder and dies, and his tears form the lake. It is a folk tale, told in several versions.
Yes, the speed skating did. The four men's events of the 1956 Cortina Winter Olympics were held on a natural-ice rink on the frozen lake from 28 to 31 January 1956. Soviet skaters won three of the four golds, including a tie for gold in the 1,500 m. It was the last Olympic speed skating on natural ice.
The large building on the south shore is the Istituto Pio XII. It opened as the Grand Hotel in 1899, hosted Queen Margherita of Italy in 1900 and housed an Italian command in the First World War. From 1949 the Diocese of Parma ran it as a children's health centre, later a respiratory centre, until it closed in December 2022. The present Grand Hotel Misurina is a different building.
A leak was found in 2022 in the concrete retaining wall on the south shore, near the outflow sluice. A first repair failed, and by November 2023 the level had dropped more than 70 cm. In July 2026 the council put the water 84 cm below the spillway, blaming a dry winter, while an opposition councillor said about 2 m was missing.
Solo: A Star Wars Story used Misurina as its base camp in May 2017, filming on Monte Piana and around the Tre Cime. According to the official Auronzo tourism site, scenes from Jurassic World Dominion were shot at nearby Lago d'Antorno. The Italian TV drama Un passo dal cielo also filmed at Lago d'Antorno and Lake Misurina.
The Tre Cime di Lavaredo loop is a walk of about 9.5 km and 400 m of climbing around three peaks, taking most people 3 to 4 hours.
Most people reach Lake Misurina by car.
The best things to do in Cortina d'Ampezzo are riding the Tofana cable car to 3,244 m, walking the First World War trenches at Cinque Torri and Lagazuoi, and strolling Corso Italia.
The best-known Dolomites lakes are Braies, Sorapis, Carezza and Misurina.