Pieniny – it is the name of the biggest and the most beautiful mountain range within the belt of lime rocks, stretching on the length of over 500 km from Bratislava through Moravia, along the southern slope of Western Beskidy Mountains until Máramaros in Romania. On the Slovak-Polish border those lime stones were pushed away under the usual rafters’ Carpathian rocks. Nowadays Pieniny, like white teeth of a huge dragon rose among the hills, and thus separating Podhale from Spisz and Beskid Sądecki Mts.

It happened in the place, where a river (today called Dunajec) was formerly meandering. The river remained in the very same spot, where millions of years ago, while eroding the rocks on which it was flowing, it shaped a narrow, very winding and picturesque river gorge. At the distance in a straight line amounting to merely 2,5 km Dunajec forms as many as 7 curves, reaching up to 9 km length. The altitude of steep walls of canyon oscillates between 300 and 500 metres and the bottom is becoming narrow in places reaching only several meters and it is completely filed with the water of the river. On the left, the Polish side there is sometimes even not a single place to stand on the shore safe. On the right, the Slovak side there is a narrow path, which was formerly a trading route running from Poland to Hungary. One can ford Dunajec or go across a bridge, and then on foot or by bike through the very heart of Pieniny Mountains, actually travelling from Poland to…Poland along a fragment of Slovakia.

The whole calcareous range is stretching out for 30 km from the west to the east having no more than 5 km width. The most spectacular part of Pieniny is protected in the trans-border Pieninski National Park. The most important peak seen in the pictures serving as illustrations for this text are: Three Crowns (982 m above the sea level), Sokolica and Czertezik rising at about 1000 meter above the sea level and 300 m over the mirror of the river Dunajec, are famous for breathtaking views
The enclosed picture showing Three Crowns.