Červený Kláštor

The Red Monastery was founded by Carthusians in the fourteenth century on the Dunajec where the river forms the Polish border, and later passed to Camaldolese monks. Its best-known figure is Cyprián, an eighteenth-century monk, herbalist and pharmacist whose herbarium of some two hundred and eighty species survives and who is said in local tradition to have built wings and flown from the Three Crowns, a story with no evidence behind it. Wooden rafts run the Dunajec gorge from below the walls.

What you actually see

• The monastery - Gothic and Baroque ranges around a cloister above the river.
• Cyprian's herbarium - the eighteenth-century collection in the museum.
• The Dunajec rafting - traditional wooden rafts running the gorge from below.
• The Pieniny gorge - limestone cliffs on both banks of the border river.

When to go

May to September is the rafting season and the monastery's busiest period. The museum keeps shorter winter hours. Rafts run only in suitable water conditions.

Honest expectations

The flying monk story is folklore and is presented as fact in places. Rafting is a slow float rather than whitewater and is heavily commercialised. The monastery museum is small.

Nearby

Stara Lubovna is southeast, and the Pieniny run along the border.