Baredine Cave

Baredine is a vertical Istrian cave opened for visitors along a stepped path that drops about sixty metres through five chambers. The formations are the reason to come: curtains, columns and a few very thin stalactites that the guides light one at a time, plus a chamber where the rock has been worked into shapes the guides have named. At the bottom you look down into a flooded gallery that divers have explored further. The cave also keeps a small tank with the olm, the blind cave salamander native to the karst of this region, which is otherwise almost impossible to see. Tours run about forty minutes at a steady eleven or twelve degrees.

What you actually see

• The stalactite curtains - thin translucent sheets of calcite lit from behind in the middle chambers.
• The olm tank - a live example of the pale, eyeless cave salamander that lives in the flooded karst.
• The bottom gallery - a viewpoint over the underground water level sixty metres below the entrance.
• The farm machinery collection - an outdoor display of old Istrian tractors and tools by the ticket office.

When to go

Open from spring to autumn, with reduced winter hours. Tours leave on a regular cycle so you rarely wait long outside July and August. Midday in high summer is the busiest and also the most appealing, since the cave stays cold while the surface is baking. Take a layer regardless of the outside temperature.

Honest expectations

It is a guided tour on a fixed route with no freedom to linger, and the commentary leans on nicknames for rock shapes. There are around three hundred steps down and the same back up, which rules it out for weak knees. The cave is cold and damp year round. Photography without flash gets very little.

Nearby

Porec and its Byzantine basilica are twenty minutes away, and the Lim inlet lies to the south.