Pieniny (Slovakia)

Pieniny National Park was established in 1967 in northern Slovakia, next to the Polish border, and at some 38 km² it is one of the smallest national parks in the country. Its territory protects the southern flank of the Pieniny massif and the Slovak stretch of the Dunajec gorge.

The protection of the area is older: as early as 1932 a reserve had been established here along with the Polish park of the same name, in what is regarded as one of the first cross-border protected areas in the world. The present Slovak national park dates from 1967, and since then the two areas have been managed in a coordinated way.

The massif is of folded limestone forming a narrow ridge with vertical walls, and the Dunajec crosses it in a winding defile more than three hundred metres deep, travelled on wooden rafts guided by boatmen, a tradition going back more than a century. The limestone substrate, the aspect and the microclimate have produced great botanical and entomological diversity in a very small space, with Pieniny endemics and a notable butterfly community. Within its territory stands the Carthusian monastery of Červený Kláštor, of the fourteenth century.