The story of Palić Lake

A local legend explains this lake: a shepherd called Pál, or Pavle, lost a lamb with a golden fleece and wept so much that his tears flooded the pasture, which is why the water is salty. Many people also believe the lake is a leftover of the ancient Pannonian Sea, which drained away some 600,000 years ago, but it is much younger than that.

It formed around 10,000 years ago, in the early Holocene, as wind-blown loess piled up and left hollows that filled with water, and over history it has repeatedly disappeared and reappeared. Today it is 8 kilometres long, up to 1 kilometre wide and shallow, on average 2 metres deep.

It was first recorded in June 1462, when the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus gave it to his mother. In the 19th century it became a spa: the first park was planted in 1841–1842, the first wooden baths and an inn opened in 1845, and the water and mud, thought to heal, drew visitors until the First World War.