Krushuna Falls

Interesting facts

Krushuna is described as the largest travertine, or tufa, cascade in Bulgaria.

The Proynovska River is rich in dissolved limestone, which gives its pools a turquoise colour and keeps building new travertine.

Below the main fall lies the Blue Whirlpool, a turquoise pool with its own small falls; other named falls include Malkata Maara and Green Rock.

The Devetaki Plateau around the falls holds more than 30 known caves, among them Urushka Maara and Boninska Cave.

The medieval hermits lived in small caves in the tufa, the same porous rock that the river deposits, and their monastery was built of it too.

A street in the Dimitar Milenkov district of Sofia is named after the Krushuna Falls.

Why it is worth it

At Krushuna, in the rolling hills of central northern Bulgaria, a small river does not just fall over rock but builds the rock it falls over. The Proynovska River emerges from a cave on the northern edge of the Devetaki Plateau and immediately tumbles down a long staircase of travertine, a soft, porous limestone deposited by the calcium-rich water itself. Each step of this staircase is a waterfall in its own right, and together they make up the Krushuna cascade, one of the most picturesque places in the country, about a kilometre south of the village of Krushuna.

The largest fall, known as Praskaloto, drops about 15 metres near the head of the cascade, close to the cave from which the river rises. Below it the water spreads into a series of lower falls and pools in the woodland, and the travertine continues to form wherever the water flows. The whole plateau is karst country, riddled with caves: Maarata, the cave where the river emerges, lies at the top of the cascade, and the well-known Devetashka Cave lies about 15 km to the west. A footpath built in the 2000s follows the river upstream from the village to the top of the falls, crossing it on a series of small bridges.

The site also has a deep human history. In the 13th and 14th centuries, during the Second Bulgarian Empire, monks of the Hesychast movement, a mystical tradition of silent prayer in the Orthodox Church, lived in seclusion here. Rock niches and cells cut into the cliffs near the falls are the remains of their monastery.

Getting there

Krushuna lies in Letnitsa Municipality, Lovech Province, about 8 km south of the town of Letnitsa and about 25 km from Sevlievo. The nearest international airport is Plovdiv (PDV), about 131 km away in a straight line on the far side of the Balkan Mountains; Sofia Airport (SOF) is about 145 km away.

Krushuna Falls

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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