Kornati

In the central part of the Croatian Adriatic, on the meeting point of Šibenik and Zadar islands, a separate and by many a specific group of islands, called Kornati, is situated.

Because of its exceptional landscape beauty, interesting geomorphology, diversity of the coastline and especially because of the rich biocoenosis of the marine ecosystem, greater part of the Kornati maritime zone has been declared a National Park in 1980. 

Today this National Park occupies an area of about 220 km2 and it includes 89 islands, islets and cliffs, altogether with a coastline about 238 km long.  Despite this relatively large number of islands the continental part of the park forms only a small part of the total area, while most of it belongs to the marine ecosystem.

The National Park Kornati has so many beauties and specifies, both dealing with its natural and cultural heritage, and especially interesting are its “crowns” - vertical cliffs of the Kornati islands facing the open sea are the most popular phenomenon of this park. The "crowns" represent a large tectonic fault surface that extends from the Istrian peninsula and ends somewhere in the middle of Dalmatia (maybe even southern), and it was caused by a global movement of Africa to the north and its "driving" into Europe.