Krka National Park

The Krka river is 45 mi long, the 22nd longest in Croatia, and its seven tufa waterfalls add up to a drop of 735 ft. It rises at the foot of the Dinara, 2.2 mi north-east of Knin, and the national park follows it for 31 mi, from 1.2 mi below Knin down to Skradin, along with the lower course of its tributary, the Čikola.

The Parliament of the Socialist Republic of Croatia proclaimed the park on 24 January 1985 over 55 mi², from the fortresses of Trošenj and Nečven to the Šibenik bridge. A revision in 1997 moved the southern limit upstream of the Skradin bridge and the northern one almost to Knin. Today the park covers 42 mi² of Šibenik-Knin county, across the towns of Knin, Drniš, Skradin and Šibenik and the municipalities of Ervenik, Kistanje and Promina.

How moss and calcite build the Krka falls

Tufa barriers can grow only in water supersaturated with carbonates, and a few conditions decide how fast they grow:

• A water hardness above 3 HD and a pH above 8.
• Warmth and a current of 0.5 to 3.5 m/s, which speed the process up.
• Mosses and cyanobacteria, which trap the microcrystals of calcite until the deposit grows into a barrier.

The tufa barriers of the karst rivers of the Dinarides are the target habitat of the park’s ecological network. Because the barriers are fragile, the ban on swimming at Skradinski buk is backed by a large majority of visitors surveyed by the park.

The seven falls, from upstream down

1. Bilušića buk
2. Brljan
3. Manojlovac
4. Rošnjak
5. Miljacka slap
6. Roški slap: a 74 ft main fall among countless backwaters, cascades and tufa islands, about 22 mi below the source; its first cascades are called the Ogrlice (Necklaces).
7. Skradinski buk

A monastery since 1445, a Roman camp and an 1895 power plant

Four places along the river carry its human history:

• Visovac Island, in the middle of the lake of the same name: the Franciscan Monastery of Our Lady of Mercy and the Church of Our Lady of Visovac have stood here since 1445. The monastery keeps an archaeological collection, historical church linens and dishes, and a library with incunabula.
• Burnum, near Ivoševci: the remains of the only preserved Roman military amphitheatre in Croatia, with the arches of the command building and the walls of the drill ground. Weapons, tools and everyday objects found there are shown in the archaeological collection of the Krka Eco Campus at Puljane.
• Skradinski buk: the remains of the Krka hydroelectric plant of 1895, the first to light a city, beside restored watermills.
• Roški slap: three restaurants still owned by millers’ families, and a road of Roman origin above the falls.

Spreading a million visitors upstream

The park received 1,037,634 visitors in 2025. A survey taken from April to October that year sketched who they were:

• Croatians the largest group (14%), ahead of Germans and French (13% each), then Poles, Americans and British.
• 80% named nature as their reason to come.
• 80% walked and 73% took photographs.

Skradinski buk is the most heavily loaded site, and at the peak of summer the park applies measures to limit visitor numbers there. Its project Nepoznata Krka (unknown Krka) aims to draw people towards the middle and upper river instead, with tools already in place:

• 29 mi of marked hiking trails, from 984 ft to 5.3 mi.
• 241 mi of Krka Bike roads in twelve loops starting from Skradin, Laškovica and the Eco Campus at Puljane.
• The Eco Campus itself, 34 mi from Šibenik and 14 mi from Drniš.