The area's oldest history centres on Arnissa, first recorded by Thucydides as one of ancient Macedonia's cities, later held as a Bulgarian stronghold before Byzantine forces retook it. In 1041, Byzantine troops, with the Varangian Guard under Harald Hardrada among them, defeated a Bulgarian rebellion near the lake then known as Ostrovo — the medieval name that survived into the twentieth century.

The lakeside villages carry more recent history. Agios Panteleimonas, recorded as a Christian village under Ottoman rule as early as the 15th century, took its current name from a church built in 1729 and kept it after 1926. Limnochori, by contrast, was a Muslim village called Tserkezkioi until the 1923 population exchange, when its Muslim families left and Greek refugees from the Caucasus resettled it; the village mosque was later replaced by a community store.

Four settlements ring the lakes, each with a different relationship to the water.

Amyntaio

The area's main town is a working agricultural centre rather than a tourist stop in itself, and the natural base for exploring the surrounding wine route; most visitors pass through rather than stay.

Agios Panteleimonas

With a few hundred residents on Vegoritida's shore, this is the closest thing the lake has to a resort, with a small cluster of lakeside fish tavernas looking out over the water.

Arnissa

Built on a small peninsula further along the lake, Arnissa is the largest of the villages and known locally for its apple orchards and a women's cooperative that still makes preserves in the traditional way.

Limnochori

The smallest and most remote of the four, Limnochori sits beside Zazari at the far end of the chain and was resettled by Greek refugee families after the 1923 population exchange.

The four lakes are linked in a single chain, water moving by canal from Zazari through Chimaditida and Petron before reaching Vegoritida, and each one draws a different kind of visitor.

Vegoritida

Vegoritida covers around 54 square kilometres below the Voras mountains, one of the larger natural lakes in northern Greece. Decades of water drawn off for the nearby Amyntaio power station, which closed in 2020, lowered the lake considerably; in 1953 the retreating water at Arnissa exposed the remains of a prehistoric settlement, now a small site of its own. Dalmatian pelicans and Lanner falcons are among the birds regularly seen here.

Petron, Chimaditida and Zazari

The three smaller lakes upstream are quieter and more specialised. Petron, protected as a Natura 2000 site, holds around ninety recorded bird species including the pygmy cormorant, and a birdwatching observatory stands three kilometres from Agios Panteleimonas. Chimaditida, shallower and reed-fringed, supports over 140 species and is the subject of an ongoing restoration project using grazing buffalo to keep the reeds in check. Zazari, the smallest and highest of the four, freezes over some winters and sits beside the village of Limnochori.

Amyntaio gives its name to a PDO wine region built on Xinomavro, planted here at a higher elevation than anywhere else the grape grows in Greece. The cooler climate keeps acidity high and allows rosé and sparkling versions alongside the reds, a range the stricter rules in Naoussa, the grape's other major region, don't permit. More than twenty wineries operate around the lake basin, part of what's marketed locally as the Wine Route of the Lakes.

Away from the vineyards, lake fish such as carp and pike turn up grilled or fried on menus in Agios Panteleimonas, and Arnissa's women's cooperative still makes apple-based preserves the traditional way. None of it is fine dining — this is produce-driven, seasonal cooking built around what the lakes and orchards provide.