It is the third largest lake in the Latium region, known to the Romans as Ciminius Lacus, The lake itself is a nature reserve and has no villages facing the water.
The origins of Lake Vico go back to Heracle who dug his club into the ground and invited the local inhabitants to extract it. Nobody was able to perform Heracle’s request and when he pulled it out, water sprung from the earth and filled the valley, creating the lake.
In the XVIth century engineers dug an underground drainage channel from the lake to the Rio Vicano stream, a tributary of River Treja, itself a tributary of the Tiber, lowering the level of the lake and reducing its surface area to its present day horse-shoe shape
Fishing regulations are rather complex. There are pike, black-bass. tench, chub. perch… No trout.