The stone town of Kuklicz or the Valley of the Dolls is a unique natural landscape comprising more than 120 stone pillars of natural origin in the village of Kuklica of the Kratovo community in northern Northern Macedonia . Among the largest attractions of the region, a popular tourist attraction.
Stone Town is located eight kilometers north-west of the city of Kratovo , in a valley on the right bank of the River Kriva . The area with stone figures is located at an altitude of 415-420 meters above sea level, extends over an area of about 0.3 km². The figures, vaguely resembling people or dolls (hence the name “Valley of the Corn”) have different sizes, differ in height and shape. The most famous are the two large figures standing nearby, nicknamed by the people “The Bridegroom and the Bride”.
There are several legends explaining the appearance of stone pillars on these lands. The most famous of them is the legend of a man who could not choose which of two women to marry him, and eventually decided to marry both at once, having appointed both weddings for one day - as a result one of the brides went to look at another wedding and found her future husband with another bride - as a result an angry woman cursed them, and all the participants in the wedding turned into stone. In accordance with another legend, once these lands were completely deserted, during the war the army passed here, and because of the extremely low air temperature, all the soldiers of this army petrified. According to local residents, new figures appear in the valley every 5-6 years.
Conducted scientific studies explain the occurrence of stone pillars by natural corrosion processes occurring in the Holocene era in the last 100 thousand years. The main factor of their formation was the difference in erodibility of volcanic rocks that existed here. This became possible due to the fact that about 30 million years ago the soft volcanic tuff lying at the base was covered on top with solid, solid andesites and ignimbrites. There are four places in the Balkans with similar natural anomalies, including three of them located on the territory of Northern Macedonia and one in Serbia - the so-called City of the Devil [1] [2] [3] .
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Notes
- ↑ Exploring Macedonia Archive dated May 26, 2011 on Wayback Machine
- ↑ Macedonia Holidays and Tours
- ↑ kuklica.50webs.com