Lake Lucerne (German: Vierwaldstättersee, literally 'Lake of the four forested settlements' (in English usually translated as forest cantons); French: lac des Quatre-Cantons; Italian: lago dei Quattro Cantoni) is a lake in central Switzerland and the fourth largest in the country.

The name of Vierwaldstättersee is first used in the 16th century. Before the 16th century, the entire lake was known as Luzerner See "Lake Lucerne", as remains the English (and partly Italian, as Lago di Lucerna) usage. The (three) "Waldstätte(n)" (lit.: "forested sites/settlements", in English usually translated as forest cantons) since the 14th century were the confederate allies of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden. The notion of "Four Waldstätten" (Vier Waldstätten), with the addition of the Canton of Lucerne , is first recorded in the 1450s, in an addition to the "Silver Book" of Egloff Etterlin of Lucerne.

Archaeologists surveying the lake-bed (during the construction of a pipeline) from 2019 to 2021 found the remains of a Bronze Age village with artifacts dating to around 1000 BC. Later, the new findings indicated that the area was settled 2,000 years earlier than historians previously thought.