Lake Bohinj

Half an hour’s drive from Bled lies a lake that is everything Bled is not: vast, quiet and wild. At 3.2 square kilometres, Lake Bohinj is Slovenia’s largest permanent lake — a good four kilometres long, up to 45 metres deep, a glacial water lying entirely within Triglav National Park. No hotel promenade — only forest, rock and the Julian Alps, which on calm mornings mirror themselves in the surface like glass.

This is the land of Zlatorog, the loveliest legend of the Julians: a white chamois with golden horns who guarded a treasure beneath Mount Bogatin. When a hunter shot him out of greed, Zlatorog lured him to his death in the cliffs — and from the drops of the creature’s blood sprang the Triglav rose. A statue of the golden-horned guardian stands by the lake today, and his name graces Slovenia’s most famous beer. By the stone bridge at Ribčev Laz you’ll also find the monument to the four brave men who in 1778 — among the first in Europe outside Mont Blanc — stood on the summit of Triglav.

The lake’s emblem is the Church of St John the Baptist beside the bridge: modest outside, painted inside with 14th–16th-century frescoes that rank among the most important medieval murals in the country. Above the lake’s western end thunders Savica waterfall, source of the Sava Bohinjka, while the cable car lifts you from the shore to Vogel in four minutes, to a view that holds the lake and Triglav in one frame. In mid-September the valley celebrates its tradition: the Cows’ Ball welcomes the flower-garlanded herds home from the high pastures.