Vicos EPA National Park

Vikos National Park is the narrow Vikos Gorge, Aoos, Mount Timfi (with its largest peak, Hamila Peak, 2497 m) and several villages of Zagoria. The Aoos ravine and the Vikos gorge are peculiar marks of the boundaries of the national park with Western Zagoria and a small part of central Zagoria.

The park is part of a unique Greek heritage. It was created to protect the region’s rare and endangered plant and animal worlds. It is good that Vicos National Park is not spoiled by mass tourism.

The park, founded in 1973, is of great ecological importance to Greece as it contains a huge variety of ecosystems. Vikos Gorge is considered the deepest gorge in the world and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. The gorge has a length of twelve kilometers, while its steep slopes have a height equal to one kilometer. Vicos has only one serious rival, the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Through the gorge flows quite a wide river Voidomatis and forms a very beautiful panorama. The Aoos River flows in the west of the Vikos Aoos National Park through Mount Gamila (Timfi), Smokilas and the Cavalry Plain all the way to Albania, flowing at the end of its way into the Adriatic Sea.

In the national park, at an altitude of 2,050 m, is the magnificent sky-blue Dragon Lake - a reminder of the ice age. This small lake is surrounded by beautiful rocks.

Legends tell of two dragons who lived many years ago on a lake in the mountains of Gamila and Smokilas. According to legends, the rare alpine newts living in the lake are the descendants of those dragons from legends.