Tara River Canyon — canyon
Image by anarxi from Pixabay

Tara River Canyon

Кањон реке Таре

  • 2 min read
  • 43.251° N 19.008° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • Nicknamed the Tear of Europe, the Tara gorge ranks among the deepest canyons on the continent, with only Russia's Sulak Canyon often cited as deeper.
  • At its deepest point the canyon drops about 1,333 metres, and its average depth is a little over 1,000 metres.
  • Its walls expose sea-floor rocks from the Middle Triassic through the Jurassic to the Late Cretaceous, more than 100 million years of deposition.
  • Over its course of roughly 158 kilometres the Tara collects 14 tributaries and runs through 69 rapids.
  • Inside Durmitor the river falls on average about 3.6 metres per kilometre, producing whitewater graded from class 2 to class 4.
  • The Đurđevića Tara Bridge, designed by Mijat Trojanović and built between 1937 and 1940, was Europe's largest concrete arch road bridge when completed.
  • The bridge stretches 365 metres in five arches, the longest of them spanning 116 metres over the river.
  • Lazar Jauković, one of the bridge's own engineers, helped the Partisans destroy an arch in 1942 and was later executed on the bridge by Italian troops.
  • Dutch writer A. den Doolaard drew on the bridge's wartime story for his 1956 novel Het land achter Gods rug.
  • The European Rafting Championships came to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2005 and 2009, with races held on the Tara and the Vrbas.

Why it is worth it

The Tara cuts one of the deepest river gorges on the continent: some 82 kilometres long and up to about 1,300 metres from rim to riverbed, it winds west from northern Montenegro and, for its last 36 kilometres, forms the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina before the Tara meets the Piva near Hum and together they become the Drina. The finest walls rise beneath the Ljubišnja massif, and the Montenegrin stretch lies inside Durmitor National Park, a World Heritage Site; on the Bosnian side the canyon is protected as Tara Nature Park.

What makes the gorge memorable is the water itself. The river is prized for the quality of its water, and it is fed less by tributaries than by powerful springs along its banks: at Bučevica cave a stream drops into the Tara from more than thirty metres up, spreading more than 150 metres wide, and the Bajlovića Sige spring pours in several hundred litres a second. Dozens of rapids and more than forty cascades give the river its voice, which carries up to the rim. The walls hold rocky terraces, pebble beaches and more than eighty large caves, and the river is one of Europe's key spawning grounds for the huchen, the giant Danube salmon. Its ecological value earned the basin UNESCO biosphere status in 1977.

The classic view over the canyon is from the Đurđevića Tara Bridge near Žabljak, a five-arch concrete bridge completed in 1940 whose roadway stands about 170 metres above the water. Partisans blew up one of its arches in 1942 to halt an Italian advance; it was rebuilt in 1946 and has since appeared in films, from the Yugoslav Most to Force 10 from Navarone. From the water, the Tara is one of Europe's great rafting rivers: the one-day run from Brštanovica down to Šćepan Polje covers about 14 kilometres of the steepest section, with more than twenty rapids.

Getting there

The nearest sizeable town on the Montenegrin side is Pljevlja, about 31 km away; on the Bosnian side Goražde is about 46 km from the canyon. The nearest international airport is Sarajevo (SJJ), roughly 84 km in a straight line. The Đurđevića Tara Bridge stands near Žabljak, in Durmitor, and rafting trips on the lower canyon end at Šćepan Polje near the confluence with the Piva.

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Montenegro 10The Most Beautiful UNESCO-Listed Natural Wonders 38The Most Beautiful Canyons and Gorges 70The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557The Most Beautiful Natural Wonders 580

From the encyclopaedia

The Tara River Canyon, also known as the Tara River Gorge, is the river canyon of the Tara river. It is for the most part located in Montenegro, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most attractive part of the canyon are the high rocks of the mountain range of Ljubišnja, which are located in the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durmitor National Park. Also in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the canyon is designated nature park, and is called Tara Nature Park.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

43.25079, 19.00847per Wikidata