Nestled in the shadows of the Italian alps is Lago d’Orta, a slender, 8-mile long lake in the Piedmont region of Italy that has long been a tourist destination. Its Renaissance and Baroque-era villas, cobblestoned streets, medieval churches and crystalline waters led the French writer Honoré de Balzac to call the lake “a pearl, enclosed by the green treasure chest of the Piemontese hills.”

The lake is also the subject of mythological and religious folklore. The island at the center of the lake, Isola San Giulio, was said to be inhabited by a dragon and the creature is an oft-recurring symbol on doorknockers and on the pulpit of the basilica located on the islet itself.