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Plitvice Lakes National Park
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How it came to be
The Plitvice Lakes formed as water running over limestone deposited travertine over thousands of years, building natural dams. Sixteen lakes are visible from the surface, and the deposits are still growing. The name Plitvice first appears in a document of 1777 by Dominik Vukasović, a priest from Otočac, and comes from the Croatian word for shallow.
The lakes were first prepared for visitors in 1888, for a visit by Crown Princess Stéphanie of Belgium, and in 1893 the Czech-born Gustav Janeček founded a society to protect them. The area became a national park in 1949 and was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1979.
In March 1991 the park saw the first armed clash with fatalities of the Croatian War of Independence, and its hotels were used as barracks. The site was on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1992 to 1997. The property was extended in 2000 and now matches the park, about 29,582 ha.
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