Pieniński

Pieniny National Park was declared in 1932 in southern Poland, next to the Slovak border. Its creation coincided with that of the Slovak park of the same name on the other side of the river, which makes it one of the first cross-border protected areas in the world, a formula then almost unheard of.

It is a small park but of spectacular relief. The Pieniny are a massif of limestone of marine origin that forms a narrow, tightly folded ridge, with vertical walls and rock spires. Its most famous feature is the Dunajec gorge: the river has cut through the massif in a winding defile whose walls rise above 300 metres, travelled for more than a century on wooden rafts guided by boatmen in traditional dress, one of the oldest tourist attractions in Poland. Above it rises the Trzy Korony massif, the Three Crowns, whose main summit offers the classic view of the park.

The limestone substrate, the aspect and the microclimate of the crags have generated a very high botanical and entomological diversity for the park's size, with numerous thermophilous and rock plants and a notable butterfly community, as well as species endemic to the Pieniny. The hay meadows on the slopes, maintained for centuries by traditional grazing, form part of that value and their abandonment is one of the present management problems. Cliff-nesting raptors breed on the walls and the woods around keep the Carpathian fauna.