1 active Plitvice Lakes alert
- CautionRoadwork lane restrictions on A1 and A6If you drive to Plitvice Lakes on Croatia’s A1 or A6 motorways, expect roadwork-related lane restrictions and allow extra time.Official details
Overview
About Great Cascades
Why stop
- Boardwalk brings you close to a string of small falls
Heads up
- A brief feature within a longer, ticketed lakes walk
Map
Where it is
Loading the Plitvice Lakes map
Full mapPlan your stop
Before you go
The highest, rockiest slopes around here are a summer buffet for grizzly bears.
Plitvice Lakes Tour Guide
Your drive to Great Cascades, narrated.
Parkwolf is a GPS audio tour guide for Plitvice Lakes National Park. As you drive, it chimes in with what’s ahead: hidden gems, upcoming stops, history, geology, and wildlife, right through your car’s speakers.
Recorded for this place
Entrance 1 and the Lower Lakes0:00 / 0:33
“You're approaching Entrance One, the starting point for the Lower Lakes canyon. Just beyond the ticket gate, the overlook gives you the broad view of Veliki Slap and the smaller cascades below.”
Plays as you drive up to Great Cascades in the Parkwolf Plitvice Lakes Tour Guide.
More stories near here in the app
- Broad Lakes, Narrow Canyon
- The Opera Singer and the Cascades
- Spring Arrives First in the Canyon
- Hotel Jezero and Kozjak Café
- 39 audio storiesacross Plitvice Lakes’s roads, triggered by GPS as you drive
- Wildlife heatmapsfor Beaver, Grey Heron, Great Cormorant, and 13 more
- Works offlinemaps, 15 trails, 36 places, and audio download before you lose signal
- CarPlay readysimple controls built for the drive
“Fantastic app with many points of information… It’s great to just turn on while you’re driving and it gives you an audio tour of the national Park. We love it!!!!”
Guide
More about Great Cascades
Where the Lower Lakes meetGreat Cascades (Velike Kaskade) is a string of small waterfalls where Gavanovac and Kaluđerovac…
Great Cascades (Velike Kaskade) is a string of small waterfalls where Gavanovac and Kaluđerovac meet in Plitvice’s Lower Lakes. It’s a close-up stop on the marked canyon walk, not a drive-up waterfall with its own parking. Plan it as part of the route: Entrance 1’s Route A covers 3.5 km and takes about 2–3 hours. You need a park entry ticket.
Walk beside the waterThe boardwalk passes close to the lowest cascade, so slow down and follow the water over the…
The boardwalk passes close to the lowest cascade, so slow down and follow the water over the low ledges into the lake. Stay on marked paths; swimming in the lakes is prohibited. For a photo, include a stretch of boardwalk beside the falls; it shows how close the route runs to the water.
The limestone keeps buildingThe Lower Lakes sit in a steep-sided canyon cut into permeable limestone.
The Lower Lakes sit in a steep-sided canyon cut into permeable limestone. Across Plitvice, water deposits tufa, or travertine, into natural barriers that shape the lakes and cascades. That process is a central part of the park’s UNESCO-recognized value.
A name in old picturesHistoric captions identify Velika Kaskada in 1904, then show the feature again in the 1920s,…
Historic captions identify Velika Kaskada in 1904, then show the feature again in the 1920s, 1950s, and 1960s. The spelling shifts between singular and plural, but the pictures follow the same cascade between the two Lower Lakes.
Wildlife
Wildlife in Plitvice Lakes
20 sightingsBeaverMost seen around 7 PMSighting map
29 sightingsGrey HeronMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
14 sightingsGreat CormorantMost seen around 7 AMSighting map
84 sightingsMerganserMost seen around 9 AMSighting map
13 sightingsDipperMost seen around 8 AMSighting map
201 sightingsMallardMost seen around 5 PMSighting mapSighting maps show where each species has been reported across Plitvice Lakes. Wildlife moves, so no sighting is guaranteed.
