Fruška Gora

Fruška Gora National Park was established in 1960 in Vojvodina, in northern Serbia, and protects some 267 km². It was the country's first national park.

It is an isolated massif rising above the Pannonian plain beside the Danube, a tectonic horst of modest altitude — it barely exceeds 500 metres — but very conspicuous in a completely flat setting. Its geological history is remarkable: it was an island in the ancient Pannonian Sea, and its strata preserve a marine fossil record of great value.

The vegetation is deciduous woodland of lime, beech and oak, with one of the largest expanses of lime forest in Europe, much prized for beekeeping, and vines have been grown on the sunny slopes since Roman times. The massif also holds sixteen Serbian Orthodox monasteries built between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, when the region was a refuge for the Serbian clergy and nobility after the Ottoman conquest, which has earned it the name of the Serbian Mount Athos. That density of monastic heritage coexists with the natural values and forms part of the protected area.