České Švýcarsko National Park

Interesting facts

The park's peregrine falcons form the largest population of the species in Central Europe.

Since 2000 young Atlantic salmon have been released into the Kamenice, a river the fish once climbed to spawn before dams on the Elbe cut them off.

Cold air trapped in the deep gorges lets mountain and even subalpine plants grow here at unusually low altitudes, a reversal of the normal order of vegetation.

The sand that became these rocks was washed by rivers from today’s Krkonoše and Jizera Mountains into a sea that covered the area 90 million years ago.

The highest summit, Růžovský vrch, is not sandstone at all but a cone of basalt left by volcanic activity in the Tertiary period.

Forest covers about 97 percent of the park, though spruce has largely displaced the beech that once dominated it.

Only one village, Mezná, lies inside the park; other hamlets such as Zadní Doubice disappeared after the Second World War.

Medieval rock castles like Šaunštejn were carved into the sandstone towers, and historians still debate whether they guarded roads or served mining and glassmaking.

Some 227 bird species have been recorded, 148 of them breeding, including the shy black stork.

Timber from these forests was once floated down the Kamenice to Hřensko, which grew up as a landing place for the logs on the Elbe.

Why it is worth it

České Švýcarsko, Bohemian Switzerland, is the Czech half of the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, a landscape of sandstone towers, walls, ravines and table hills on the right bank of the Elbe northeast of Děčín. A protected landscape area since 1972, its wildest core became a national park on 1 January 2000, covering about 79 square kilometres; across the border it continues without a break into Germany's Saxon Switzerland. The rock here was laid down as sand on the floor of a Cretaceous sea, then fractured and carved by water, frost and wind into a maze in which narrow, cool gorges full of moss and ferns lie only a few steps from sunlit lookouts high above the forest. The name itself is an eighteenth-century invention: two Swiss artists, Adrian Zingg and Anton Graff, found that these hills reminded them of home.

The emblem of the park is Pravčická brána, the largest natural sandstone arch in Europe, with a span of 26.5 metres and an opening 16 metres high. Walking on the arch itself has been forbidden since 1982 because of the erosion caused by visitors, but it can be seen at close range from the surrounding paths and terraces. Tucked beneath it is Sokolí hnízdo, the Falcon's Nest, a picturesque inn built in 1881 by Prince Edmund of Clary-Aldringen, whose family did more than anyone to turn this wilderness into a destination. Scenes of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were filmed among these rocks.

The other great sight is the valley of the Kamenice river, which cuts two deep gorges on its way down to Hřensko and the Elbe. From the 1880s Prince Edmund paid for paths and tunnels to be cut through the sandstone along the stream, and in 1890 the lower gorge, named Edmund's Gorge after him, opened to visitors, with uniformed boatmen punting visitors between the rock walls; the upper Wild Gorge followed in 1898. The boat trips still run, the boatmen pointing out shapes in the rock as they go. Elsewhere, around the village of Jetřichovice, wooden stairs and ladders lead up to viewpoints perched on rock pillars such as Mariina skála and Vilemínina stěna, with long views over an unbroken sea of forest. Large fires in 2022 left parts of that forest scorched, and the burned slopes have become a place to watch a forest regenerate.

Getting there

The park lies in the far north of the Czech Republic, along the German border; the town of Děčín is about 17 km away, and Hřensko, on the Elbe at the foot of the gorges, is the usual starting point for the arch and the Kamenice gorges, about 3 km southwest of Pravčická brána. The nearest airport is Dresden (DRS) in Germany, about 52 km away; within the country, Václav Havel Airport Prague (PRG) is about 88 km away. The highest point of the park is Růžovský vrch, at 619 metres.

České Švýcarsko National Park

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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