Silver Lake (Serbia)


Silver Lake or Srebrno Lake is an oxbow lake along the right Danube bank in the Braničevo region in eastern Serbia, near the town of Veliko Gradište. It is a popular tourist resort.

Location

The lake is located east of Belgrade, northeast of Požarevac and west of Veliko Gradište.

Geography

The lake itself is in the broad, low valley of the Danube, but the neighboring hills rise up from on the north to on the south, while the entire western part of the valley is enclosed by the elongated hill of Veliko brdo and its highest peak of Anatema. The mouth of the river Pek into the Danube, known by its inverse flow during the high water levels, is just south of the lake. Historical sites of the medieval city-fortresses of Ram and Golubac also in the vicinity of the lake, so as the springs of "Hajdučka voda".
Silver Lake is an arm of the Danube on its right bank. With the main river bed of the Danube it engulfes the marshy ada of Ostrovo. On both points which connect the lake to the Danube it was dammed and bridged in 1971 by the Veliko Gradište-Zatonje road which also crosses the island. Other settlements on the lake are Biskuplje and Kisiljevo.
Silver Lake has an irregular arch shape, it is long, up to wide and covers an area of. It is situated at the altitude of and deep as much as. The water is clear due to the lack of pollution and the natural filtration of the water through many sand dunes. The lake is abundant in fish, including white amur, common carp, wels catfish, northern pike, perch, zander, grass carp and other freshwater whitefish.

Economy

The lake has been a popular holiday and fishing destination for decades, but recently experienced visitor's boom, attracting tourists from all over Central Serbia, despite lack of major accommodations. The lake has one hotel, several restaurant-boardinghouses, a weekend-settlement and the largest car camping park in Serbia.
As a result of the lake's growing popularity, it has been since recently advertised as "Serbian sea", since Serbia is landlocked. A major plans for turning Silver Lake from the resort of the middle class into a more elite place were announced in July 2007. In the next seven years it is planned to build three hotels, congressional halls, pools, golf courses, cycling paths, shopping malls and marina. The tennis courts have been constructed earlier in 2007.
In 2017, the Silver Lake had the tourist capacity of 2,000 beds with 500 being in construction with the deadline in 2018. There are over 50 objects as part of the village tourism, seven villas, but still only one hotel. Basketball player Miloš Teodosić opened his on the lake. Vicinity of the lake is the location of many festivities: the annual , Serbian beach volley championships, "The Days of Carevac", "Bean Festival", "Fishermen Evenings", Silafest, "The Dusks of Ram", etc. There were over 50,000 visitors in 2016, including many from the neighboring Romania, who mostly visit by weekends.