Saxon Switzerland

Saxon Switzerland National Park was created in 1990 in Saxony, next to the Czech border, and protects some 93 km² of the Elbe sandstone mountains. It adjoins Bohemian Switzerland National Park in the Czech Republic, with which it forms a continuous ecological unit.

The landscape was carved out of sandstones laid down in a Cretaceous sea and later raised and fractured: erosion has followed those fractures and isolated a labyrinth of towers, spires, mesas and defiles. The Bastei formation, with its stone bridge above the Elbe at almost two hundred metres, is the most recognisable image of the district.

That landscape carries a notable cultural weight. The painters of German Romanticism, led by Caspar David Friedrich, turned it into an image of the sublime, and the region is also the cradle of sandstone climbing: from the late nineteenth century a style of its own developed here with strict ethical rules, among them the ban on using chalk and on placing artificial protection, which is still in force and has influenced free climbing worldwide. The wildlife includes peregrine falcon and eagle owl on the walls, and the lynx has returned to the area in recent years.