Lake Morat or more rarely
Lake Murten 
(French:
Lac de Morat [lak də mɔʁa]) is a lake located in the cantons of Fribourg and
Vaud 
in the west of
Switzerland 
. It is named after the small bilingual town of Murten/Morat on its southern shore.
It is the smallest of the three lakes in the Seeland or Pays des trois lacs area of the Swiss plateau located at the foot of the first chain of the Jura mountains. The main tributary is the river
Broye 
.
Since the Jura water correction its water leaves the lake through the Broye Canal (
Canal de la Broye) into nearby
Lake Neuchâtel 
that is connected to Lake Bienne/
Lake Biel 
through the
Thielle 
canal. Thus all three lakes form a natural reservoir in order to retain overflow water from the river
Aare 
that flows into Lake Bienne/Biel: in times of combined heavy rainfalls and glacier melting in the
Alps 
, the peculiar situation arises that the water flows backwards through the Thielle and Broye canals, preventing an overflow of the Grand Marais.