With its exceptional natural beauty, this area has always attracted nature lovers, and already on 8 April 1949 it was proclaimed Croatia’s first national park, and is situated in the mountainous karst area of central Croatia, at the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The process of tufa formation, which results in the building of the tufa, or travertine, barriers and resulted in the creation of the lakes, is a unique universal value, for which the Plitvice Lakes were internationally recognised on 26 October 1979 with their inscription onto the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The national park is world-famous for its lakes arranged in cascades. Currently, 16 lakes can be seen from the surface. These lakes are a result of the confluence of several small rivers and subterranean karst rivers. The lakes are all interconnected and follow the water flow. They are separated by natural dams of travertine, which is deposited by the action of moss, algae, and bacteria. The particularly sensitive travertine barriers are the result of an interplay between water, air and plants. The encrusted plants and bacteria accumulate on top of each other, forming travertine barriers which grow at the rate of about 1 cm per year.
The sixteen lakes are separated into an upper and lower cluster formed by runoff from the mountains, descending from an altitude of 636 to 503 m over a distance of some eight km, aligned in a south-north direction. The lakes collectively cover an area of about two square kilometres, with the water exiting from the lowest lake forming the Korana River.
The lakes are renowned for their distinctive colors, ranging from azure to green, grey or blue. The colors change constantly depending on the quantity of minerals or organisms in the water and the angle of sunlight.
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