The Lago della Sella is located in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, in the municipality of Airolo. You can reach it through the famous pass of St. Gotthard. From the mountains of Ospizio to the lake is a small mountain path length of several hundred meters.

Lago della Sella can be considered a creation of human hands, for it was formed by the installation of a large retaining wall, built in the period from 1945 to 1949. Wall height is 36 meters and a length of about 334 meters. Just the reservoir holds more than 9 million cubic meters of water. Water from this lake and the nearby Lago di Lucendro used for the production of electrical energy installations in Airolo station.

Two huge generators, each about 29 megawatts produce so much energy that it is more than enough to cover the needs of Chiasso, the most southern Swiss town with about 10,000 inhabitants.

Since the construction of power plants was performed immediately after the Second world war, the shortage of labor and building materials led to the fact that you selected a type of construction that allows in the shortest possible time with minimum cost to build a wall, able to withstand the pressure coming into the reservoir fluid.

As time has shown, the calculation was correct. Even today, after more than half a century, the artificial lake Lago della Sella continues to perform assigned once before him people task and makes it no worse than modern power plants.