Plitvice Lakes

Plitvice Lakes National Park (Plitvička jezera) is, without question, Croatia's most beautiful natural park and one of Europe's most extraordinary. Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1979 — eight years before Croatian independence, under Tito's Yugoslavia — this 296 km² park protects a unique karst phenomenon: sixteen terraced lakes along 8 km of canyon, linked by 92 waterfalls that turn the water into a liquid sculpture. The lakes split into two groups — the twelve upper lakes (Gornja jezera, upstream) carved into dolomite, and the four lower lakes (Donja jezera, downstream) cut into limestone — for a total drop of 133 metres from the highest (Prošćansko, 636 m) to the lowest (Novakovića Brod, 503 m).

The extraordinary colour of the lakes — turquoise, emerald green, cobalt blue depending on depth, light and angle — results from a fascinating biochemical process. The waters, loaded with calcium carbonate dissolved by the Bijela and Crna rivers, deposit this limestone as they rush over the mosses, algae and bacteria that populate the natural sills. These deposits form travertine barriers (porous, fragile limestone) that grow on average 1 cm per year — continuously creating new waterfalls and erasing old ones. Plitvice is one of the few places in the world where you can watch this phenomenon in real time.

The wildlife in the park is remarkable. Lika, the forested region surrounding Plitvice, shelters one of Western Europe's last populations of brown bears (60-80 individuals in the park and its surroundings), along with wolves (rare but present), Eurasian lynx (reintroduced in the 1970s), wild boar, deer, chamois and more than 126 bird species (golden eagles, tawny owls, black woodpeckers). Spotting them remains difficult — animals flee the busy trails — but enthusiasts can organise guided dusk outings. The park is explored via a network of wooden walkways (18 km in total) that line or span the waterfalls, along with silent electric boats that cross the largest lakes (notably Kozjak, the deepest at 47 m).