Galešnjak
Encyclopedia
Galešnjak is located in the Pašman channel of the Adriatic, between the islands of Pašman
Pašman
Pašman is an island off the coast of the Adriatic Sea in Croatia, located to the south of Zadar, surrounded by the islands Ugljan, Iž, Dugi otok and Kornati...

 and the town of Turanj on mainland Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...

. It is one of the worlds few naturally occurring heart-shaped objects.

The island has a surface area of 0.132 km2, with its beach measuring 1.55 km in length. The island features two peaks, the highest of which is 36 m high above sea level.

Galešnjak is privately owned and contains only wild plants and trees. Human activity recorded on this island are three known Illyria
Illyria
In classical antiquity, Illyria was a region in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula inhabited by the Illyrians....

n burial mounds and remains of an ancient building's foundations.

The island's unusual shape was first recorded in the early 19th century by Napoleon
Napoleon I
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...

's cartographer Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré
Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré
Charles-François Beautemps-Beaupré was a French hydrographer, hydrographic engineer and cartographer. He was a member of the Académie des sciences and the Bureau des Longitudes and is held to be the father of modern French hydrography...

, who included it in his 1806 atlas of the Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....

n coast (kept today at the National and University Library in Zagreb
Zagreb
Zagreb is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Croatia. It is in the northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the Medvednica mountain. Zagreb lies at an elevation of approximately above sea level. According to the last official census, Zagreb's city...

).

The island was highlighted on Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...

 in February 2009, which brought the island to worldwide attention.

External links

aired by Croatian Radiotelevision
Croatian Radiotelevision
Croatian Radiotelevision is a Croatian public broadcasting company. It operates several radio and television channels, over a domestic transmitter network as well as satellite...

on 14 February 2009
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