Lake Santa Giustina

The Val di Non used to be very different from how it is now. When my granddad was a boy, the river Noce used to flow where the lake is now. You could hear the roar of the river from the villages along its banks but all of a sudden the valley changed.

Let me tell you a story: the story of Lake Santa Giustina. Between 1946 and 1952, many people in the Val di Non like my granddad worked on the construction of the Santa Giustina dam which, for many years, was the highest dam in Europe at 152.50 metres. When the dam was finished, the lake was filled which submerged roads and bridges built decades previously, giving the valley its current beautiful appearance.
Lake Santa Giustina is in the middle of the Val di Non. In spring, around March and April, I love to go down to the Plaze di Dermulo on the shore of the lake to look at the submerged bridges which reappear, as if by magic. The first to re-emerge is always the Pont dei Regai and when the water level is really low you can see the a small medieval bridge, the Pont della Mula, sticking out of the lake.
Lake Santa Giustina is a beautiful sight from a distance and my favourite place to view it is the Dos de Pez hill in Cles, which offers a fairytale vista: the lake, the mountains and Cles castle which appears to control the whole valley.