Piatra Craiului

Piatra Craiului National Park was declared in 1990 in the southern Carpathians, between the counties of Brașov and Argeș, and protects some 148 km². Its defining feature is the ridge that gives it its name: a wall of Jurassic limestone some twenty-five kilometres long and very narrow, the longest and narrowest formation of its kind in the Romanian Carpathians.

The ridge rises above 2,200 metres and falls in vertical walls several hundred metres high to the west, above the Dâmbovicioara valley, with a highly developed karst at its base that has generated gorges, caves and dolines. Traversing the full ridge is one of the classic routes of Romanian mountaineering and involves exposed sections.

The isolation of those crags has favoured notable botanical endemism: the Piatra Craiului pink, Dianthus callizonus, is found only in the massif and has become the park's symbol, incorporated into its logo. The wildlife is the complete Carpathian set, with brown bear, wolf, lynx and chamois, and the park forms part of one of the areas of highest large-carnivore density in Europe. The pastures on the slopes are still used for traditional sheep grazing, a use that keeps habitats of high botanical value open.