Few postcards sum up the High Tatras better than Štrbské Pleso: a still, dark glacial lake at 1,350 metres, granite peaks reflected in the water, a pair of slender ski jumps silhouetted against the sky and, all around, grand hotels with a Central European feel. It is the highest resort village in the Tatras and, for many, the most photogenic: the place where the high mountains reveal themselves without asking anything of you yet, because the walk around the lake is flat and suitable for everyone.
But Štrbské Pleso is also a gateway to the real mountains. Some of Slovakia's most classic hikes start from its shores: the climb to Popradské pleso, another spectacular lake with a mountain hut; the ascent up the Mlynická dolina valley to the Skok waterfall; or the high-mountain routes towards Rysy, on the Polish border. In winter, the village changes its skin and becomes one of the country's capitals of cross-country skiing and biathlon, with the lake frozen and the forest covered in snow.
This guide explores Štrbské Pleso with a practical eye: how to get there on the rack railway and the Tatra electric railway, which hikes to do depending on your level, how much the lifts cost and when to book them, where to sleep and eat, and how to use the village as a base for exploring the western part of the High Tatras, one of the most accessible and beautiful high-mountain corners in all of Central Europe, with verified prices and tips for the changeable mountain weather.
Štrbské Pleso owes its name to the glacial lake (pleso) that formed at the foot of the Tatras thousands of years ago, and to the neighbouring village of Štrba, down in the valley. Until the 19th century the area was a land of shepherds and forests; tourism arrived with Romanticism and the discovery of the benefits of mountain air. In 1872 the first spa hotel opened beside the lake, and in the early 20th century the rack railway and the electric railway connected the village with the valley, driving its growth as a health resort and winter sports destination. In 1970 Štrbské Pleso hosted the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships, which left behind the large ski jumps and much of today's sports infrastructure. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The roof of the Carpathians and the Liptov highlands: the glacial peaks of the Tatras, the lake at Štrbské Pleso, Orava Castle where 'Nosferatu' was filmed, and the wooden village of Vlkolínec, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Read the history of The High Tatras and northern Liptov →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have over 20 activities in Cracovia. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Three are below so you get the idea: tap any of them and they all open.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before there were hotels, ski jumps or rack railways, there was a glacier. The lake that gives Štrbské Pleso its name is a pleso of glacial origin: it formed at the end of the last Ice Age, some ten to twelve thousand years ago, when the great rivers of ice flowing down from the High Tatras retreated and left behind a basin carved into the rock and closed off by a moraine, the pile of rocks and sediment the glacier had pushed down the slope. Meltwater filled that basin and created the lake that today mirrors the peaks, at an altitude of about 1,346 metres, the largest and best-known of the plesá on the southern side of the Tatras.
For centuries, the area had no permanent settlement. It belonged to the lands of the village of Štrba, down in the valley, whose inhabitants (farmers and shepherds from the Liptov and Spiš regions, in the Kingdom of Hungary) climbed up to the high meadows every summer with their flocks of sheep. The region's cooking comes from this pastoral life, shared across the whole Tatras, with bryndza (a soft sheep's cheese) as its emblem. The high mountains around the lake, on the other hand, belonged to hunters, gatherers of medicinal herbs and the legendary treasure seekers who ventured into the valleys dreaming of veins of gold and silver.
In short, the lake and its surroundings were a remote, wild place, known to the locals but unknown to the rest of the world. All of that would change in the 19th century, when a new appreciation of the mountains and a revolution in transport put Štrbské Pleso on the map.
The 19th century brought two things to the Tatras. One was Romanticism, which turned the mountains from a place people feared into a sublime and desirable landscape. The other was the medical finding that the pure, dry mountain air helped people with lung diseases, especially tuberculosis. So, over the course of the century, spas and health resorts sprang up at the foot of the High Tatras. Štrbské Pleso, with its spectacular lake and its altitude, was an ideal spot.
The key date is usually given as 1872, when the first hotel and rest house went up beside the lake, driven by private initiative and by the Austro-Hungarian aristocracy and middle classes' enthusiasm for mountain air. Over the following decades more hotels, villas, a sanatorium for respiratory illnesses and gardens were added, and the whole place took on the look of an elegant belle époque resort, which you can still sense in some of the buildings. Štrbské Pleso became a prestigious health resort, popular with holidaymakers in search of health, scenery and a touch of class.
None of this tourism would have been possible without the railway. In 1871 the Košice–Bohumín line, which ran through Štrba, brought the Tatras closer to the rest of the empire. Then, in the early 20th century, a rack railway was built to link Štrba station in the valley with Štrbské Pleso, climbing the steep slope through the forest. Together with the Tatra Electric Railway, which connected the base villages, it made the lake an easy place to reach. The shepherds' remote mountains had become accessible to thousands of visitors.
After the First World War and the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the Tatras region became part of the new Czechoslovakia, along with the rest of Slovakia. Štrbské Pleso carried on as a health and winter sports resort, now in a state that promoted mountain tourism for its own citizens. Between the wars its facilities grew and its reputation as a place for health and skiing became firmly established.
The Second World War brought the violence of the era to the Tatras. First came the years of the Slovak State, a satellite of Nazi Germany, and then the Slovak National Uprising of 1944, with fighting, partisan operations in the mountains and the hardship of occupation. The region's grand hotels and sanatoriums went through difficult years, either requisitioned or damaged by the war.
Once the war was over and the communist regime took power in Czechoslovakia in 1948, Štrbské Pleso, like the whole area, entered a new chapter. The mountains were opened up to everyone: tourism stopped being a privilege of the aristocracy and became available to the working masses, with hotel complexes, trade union holiday homes and state sanatoriums. And in 1949 the Tatra National Park (TANAP) was created, putting the whole massif under protection and laying the foundations of the conservation rules that still apply today.
The event that transformed Štrbské Pleso for good was its selection as host of the 1970 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships. It was the first time Czechoslovakia had organised a world championship in this sport, and Štrbské Pleso, with its altitude and reliable snow, was chosen as the venue. A huge modernisation project was carried out for the event: workers built the large ski jumps that still dominate the village skyline, a ski jumping stadium, cross-country trails, hotels such as the iconic Hotel FIS and Hotel Patria, and much of the sports and tourist infrastructure that defines the place today.
The 1970 Championships put Štrbské Pleso on the international sporting map and confirmed it as Slovakia's capital of Nordic skiing and biathlon. Since then, its cross-country trails and jumping stadium have hosted many competitions, and the village has become a training centre and a benchmark for winter sports in the country. The ski jumps, visible from the lakeside promenade, are now one of the place's visual symbols.
This sporting boost added to Štrbské Pleso's existing role as a health resort and hiking destination, making it a year-round place: hiking and walks in summer, cross-country and downhill skiing and biathlon in winter. The building boom did, however, also leave a rather functional resort village next to the historic buildings, a product of socialist-era architecture.
In November 2004, the great windstorm that swept the High Tatras flattened millions of trees on the southern slopes, and the area around Štrbské Pleso also lost much of the spruce forest that covered the foothills. The forest's recovery has been slow but visible, and today young trees are once again covering many of the slopes. The episode showed how fragile the high-mountain ecosystem is and fuelled the ever-present debate between tourism development and conservation.
Today Štrbské Pleso is one of the most visited places in the High Tatras and in Slovakia. It combines the easy appeal of the walk around the lake, which anyone can do, with its role as a gateway to the high mountains through its glacial valleys and lakes, plus winter cross-country and downhill skiing and biathlon. Large renovated hotels, such as the Kempinski on the lakeshore, sit alongside guesthouses and mountain huts, and the rack railway and the Tatra Electric Railway still bring in visitors, just as they did over a century ago.
Today's challenge is the same one facing the whole mountain range: handling huge numbers of visitors without harming the national park. Car parks fill up in high season, the high trails close every winter for safety and to protect wildlife, and the TANAP authorities try to strike a balance between opening the mountains to the public and preserving their nature. So the glacial lake that was born of ice thousands of years ago, and that belonged to shepherds for centuries, is now an internationally famous mountain resort and still one of the best-loved and most photographed corners of the Carpathians.
