The Devil's Throat Cave

In the Trigrad gorge the Trigrad river runs straight into a hole in the mountainside and disappears, dropping some forty metres inside into a chamber the guides call the Rumbling Hall, which is the largest underground waterfall in the Balkans and loud enough that you shout to be heard. The water then travels through the mountain for a few hundred metres and emerges again lower down, and the curious detail everyone repeats is that nothing thrown into the sinkhole has ever been recovered from the resurgence, however light. Local legend attaches the cave to Orpheus, who is said to have descended here to find Eurydice, which fits both the geography and the Rhodope habit of claiming him. Visitors enter through a tunnel and leave by climbing three hundred and one steep steps beside the falling water.

The landscape

• The Rumbling Hall - the vast chamber and the underground waterfall in it.
• The sinkhole - the point where the river vanishes into the mountain outside.
• The 301 steps - the steep climb out beside the falling water.
• The Trigrad gorge - the narrow limestone canyon the road runs through.

When to go

May to October is the practical season, as the mountain roads are difficult in winter and the cave sometimes closes; the waterfall is most powerful after snowmelt in spring. Tours run at set times in groups. It is cold and wet inside whatever the weather outside.

Practical notes

The exit is three hundred and one steep, wet, slippery steps in a confined stairway, which is genuinely hard work and unsuitable for anyone with mobility or breathing difficulties, and there is no other way out. It is loud, dark and damp. The road through the Trigrad gorge is narrow and spectacular but not for nervous drivers.

Nearby

The Yagodina cave and Trigrad village are close; Devin's spa and the Rhodope villages lie north.

Key facts