The climate is mild in both summer and winter, producing Mediterranean vegetation, with many gardens growing rare and exotic plants.

The highest mountain overlooking Lake Maggiore is Monte Rosa (4,634 m; 15,203 ft), located about 50 kilometres (31 mi) west of it.

The culminating point of the lake's drainage basin is the Grenzgipfel summit of Monte Rosa at 4,618 metres (15,151 ft) above sea level.

During winter, the lake helps to maintain a higher temperature in the surrounding region (since water releases heat energy more slowly than air).

[citation needed] The spontaneous vegetation is composed of yew, holly and chestnut trees on the surrounding hills.

The lake is home to several species of nesting waterfowl, it also represents an important corridor, a place of rest and feeding for migrations.

[10] A number of exotic species have established themselves in the lake, including pikeperch, which has been recorded since 1977; wels catfish, which was first noticed in the early 1990s; and ruffe, introduced in the mid-1990s.

In Roman times a maritime line was created that linked the lake, thanks to Ticino, to Pavia, from where the ships would then continue along the Po to the Adriatic Sea.

Most of the current settlements originated in the Middle Ages when the lake was under the Della Torre, Visconti, the Borromeo and Habsburg families.

[15] From the middle of the 19th century, the lake began to experience strong tourist development, particularly after Queen Victoria's stay in Baveno in 1879.

[16] In 1936, a Bugatti Type 22 Brescia Roadster, built in 1925, was sunk in the lake by employees of Zürich architect Marco Schmucklerski, when Swiss customs officials investigated whether he had paid taxes on the car.

Meina is a municipality located 77 kilometres (48 miles) northwest of Milan, on the southern shores of Lake Maggiore.

At that time, the Hotel Meina housed a number of Jewish guests, most of them escapees of the Nazi occupation of Greece.

[21] The area around Lake Maggiore was not under Allied control but was occupied by the German Waffen-SS, specifically the infamous Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler.

On the night of 22 September 1943, most of the Jewish residents of the Hotel Meina were executed and their bodies were thrown into Lake Maggiore.

[22] However, in 1970, the German Supreme Court declared the statute of limitations for those particular war crimes to have expired, and the prisoners were released.

The protagonist (Frederic Henry) and his lover (Catherine Barkley) are forced to cross the transnational border within the lake in a row boat to escape Italian carabinieri.

Die Flippers, a German Schlager group wrote a song called "Lago Maggiore" that appears on their 1990 album Sieben Tage Sonnenschein.