Kornati

Kornati National Park was established in 1980 in the central Adriatic, off the coast of Dalmatia, and protects some 217 km² around an archipelago of about eighty-nine islands, islets and reefs, the densest island group in the Mediterranean. Most of the park's area is marine.

The islands are emerged ridges of karst limestone, almost devoid of tree cover and of fresh water, with an arid, bare appearance owing as much to the nature of the substrate as to centuries of sheep grazing and burning. That bareness is precisely what makes them visually singular: George Bernard Shaw wrote that on the last day of creation God wished to crown his work and created the Kornati out of tears, stars and breath.

Their most remarkable geomorphological feature is the krune, or crowns: the cliffs with which the outer islands fall sheer into the open sea, some more than eighty metres above the water and as much again below, the result of the fracturing of the karst. The seabeds, protected from fishing, preserve coralligenous communities and Posidonia meadows. The islands are permanently uninhabited but belong to owners in the neighbouring towns, who keep cottages, olive groves and livestock there, a traditional use that coexists with the protection.