Lake Bled

Lake Bled is small, about 2.1 km long and 1.4 km wide, and part of its fame is exactly that scale: from almost any point on its shore you can take in the whole scene at once. A castle stands on a cliff above the northern shore, a church rises from the only island, and the peaks of the Julian Alps fill the background. The lake is of mixed glacial and tectonic origin, reaches 29.5 metres at its deepest, and is fed in part by a warm spring, which lets the surface water reach the low twenties Celsius at the height of summer.

People were drawn here long before the resorts. A deposit of gold appliqués from the 13th–12th centuries BC found by the shore suggests the lake was a Bronze Age cult site. Bled Castle, whose story reaches back to the early 11th century and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II, still watches over the lake and now houses a museum. For centuries visitors have come for recreation and for the supposed healing benefits of the water.

Bled Island carries the pilgrimage church of the Assumption of Mary, built in its present form in the late 17th century, with remains of Gothic frescoes from around 1470 in the chancel, rich Baroque furnishings and a 52-metre tower. A Baroque stairway of 99 stone steps, dating from 1655, climbs from the landing. Local tradition says a groom should carry his bride up all 99 steps on their wedding day before she rings the church bell and makes a wish. The traditional way across is by pletna, a flat-bottomed wooden boat with a bright awning, rowed standing up. In 1740 Empress Maria Theresa granted 22 local families the exclusive right to ferry pilgrims to the island, and many of today's oarsmen descend from them.

The lake's flat, sheltered water has made it one of the world's great rowing venues; it has hosted the World Rowing Championships four times. And no visit is complete without the local cream cake, kremna rezina, whose recipe was fixed at a hotel patisserie by the lake in 1953.

Getting there

The town of Bled sits on the lake's eastern shore. Lesce–Bled railway station is about 4 km away, and the capital, Ljubljana, about 55 km. The nearest larger town by distance is Kranj, about 25 km away. The nearest airport in Slovenia is Ljubljana Jože Pučnik (LJU), about 32 km away; Klagenfurt (KLU) in Austria is at a similar distance, about 36 km.