Red Lake is a hydromorphological phenomenon, a world rarity because of its unique shape, colour, and genesis. It is located 1.5 km to the north-west of Imotski. It was formed when underground water pits collapsed and experts often call it a wonder of karst because it is an abyss with slopes resembling a natural well. It is some 200 meters in diameter and more than 500 meters deep, half of which is the depth of the water. Its bottom has not been entirely explored yet. Josip Roglić, a member of the Academy, carried out the first systematic morphological and hydrological research of Red Lake in 1937, but the data were not particularly accurate, since technology was not particularly advanced at the time. More accurate data on Red Lake were provided by engineer Milivoj Petrik, who published the results of his research in the 1950s. Petrik found the lowest point of the bottom at 4.1 m above sea level. He also determined the highest (274.5 m) and the lowest (252.8 m) water level. According to the morphological classification, Red Lake is the deepest pit in the Dinaric karst and water fills half of it. Moreover, it is one of the deepest speleological caves in the world that is constantly under water. The lake was protected in 1964 (and the whole area north of the town in 1971) as an important landscape. It encompassed Blue Lake and Red Lake as nature monuments, as well as a larger forested area covered with black pine. The first description of Red Lake dates from the beginning of the 18th century. Ivan Zuane Franceschi, a military officer from Venice, wrote a letter to his friend in 1717, after the liberation of Imotski from the Turks: I think I was even more terrified and impressed when I saw the second abyss (the first was Blue Lake; author’s remark). It seemed as if an artist’s hand had taken a hammer and a chisel to carve a big circle in bare stone on the almost flat top of the hill and cut it vertically, like a very deep well. The crater is more than half a mile in circumference, very steep (almost vertical), and its bottom has not been discovered yet. The stone is red with no bush or spring to appease those dreadful cliffs. When you see those chasms, you ask yourself in fear how they were created. Have they always been like that or did some underground volcano, now inactive, start spitting lava and underground rocks, thus creating those wide-open mouths? (La Dalmazia, no. 10, 1846) The legend says that Gavan’s Estate (a rich man’s castle) tumbled down into the lake when an angel dressed as a beggar warned the lady of the house of fairness and charity and she replied arrogantly: I don’t need for your God, as long as I have my Gavan!, refusing to give him alms. At that moment the ground trembled and Gavan and his estate fell in the abyss. The abyss then filled with water and legends of evil supernatural beings whose howling can still be heard from the red crater even today. Friar Silvestar Kutleša wrote the legend down in 1937 and friars I. Despot and J.E. Tomić published it later. They also wrote down a folk song which explains the fall of Gavan’s Estate into the abyss – Red Lake. The song has 25 verses written in the folk meter that contains eight feet (the feature lost in translation). They vividly portray a terrifying story of a punishment brought on by conceit, one of the greatest human flaws.
