AbstractNorthern Italy has furnished abundant evidence of the ‘pile-dwelling phenomenon’ which is found throughout the Alpine area. Neolithic pile-dwellings are known for northern Italy starting from the Early Neolithic (Isolino di Varese). However, lake-dwelling villages were most widespread in Northern Italy between about 2000 and 1400 BC, between the Early and Middle Bronze Age, and continued in the Late Bronze Age. At a time when in other Alpine regions pile-dwellings became rarer, in a large part of northern Italian territory they became the main settlementmodel. Pile-dwelling villages spread from western Piedmont to Veneto, from Trentino to the lower Lombardy and Veneto plains, along the banks of lakes, peat bogsand river depressions. The main concentration of pile-dwellingsettlements was in the Varese lakes and around Lake Garda. In recent decades, in part thanks to the introduction of dendrochronology, our knowledge of these sites has deepened. New excavations, scientific analysis and dendrochronology have helped to increase our knowledge of these settlements.