Plitvice Lakes Autumn Colour — Croatia

The sixteen terraced lakes of Plitvice Lakes National Park in the Croatian highlands undergo one of Central Europe's most extraordinary autumn transformations each October, as the surrounding beech and hornbeam forest turns simultaneously from green to vivid gold and orange while the travertine-formed waterfalls continue their constant cascade between lakes of improbable turquoise-green — the contrast between fiery autumn colour and the cold mineral colour of the water creating a visual combination found nowhere else in Europe. The lakes' extraordinary turquoise is caused by calcium carbonate and magnesium deposits that scatter light regardless of season, and in autumn the colour intensifies against the warm leaf tones above to produce a chromatic drama of exceptional photographic power. Walking the wooden boardwalk trails that pass through the spray zones of the sixteen waterfalls, with autumn leaves floating on the turquoise surfaces below and the roar of Veliki Slap — Croatia's highest waterfall at 78 metres — audible from kilometres away, is a sensory experience of considerable richness. The park receives over a million visitors in summer but autumn weekdays are dramatically quieter, and the early morning mist that pools between the lake surfaces before burning off in the October sun adds a theatrical atmosphere. UNESCO World Heritage status since 1979 confirms its status as one of Europe's premier natural landscapes.