Piusa Caves

Piusa is not a natural cave system. Between 1922 and 1966 glass sand was cut out of the hillside by hand, and the miners left behind rows of arched pillars holding up the roof. The result looks like a sandstone cathedral by accident - long naves of pale, almost white rock, with the tool marks still visible.

What you actually see

• The chambers - roughly five metres high, with domed ceilings resting on regularly spaced pillars.
• The material - fine quartz sand compressed into soft stone, unusually light in colour and close to cream.
• The acoustics - dead and quiet, with none of the echo underground usually gives.
• The viewing gallery - a look into a section of the caverns from above ground, beside a visitor centre covering the mining history.

When to go

May to September is when guided tours run into the accessible section. From October to April the caves are a protected bat roost and closed to visitors, though the visitor centre and the viewing gallery stay open.

Honest expectations

You do not wander around freely. Large parts of the system have collapsed or been closed on safety grounds, and access is by guided tour into one stabilised section only. Anyone imagining kilometres of exploration will be disappointed by the scale of what is open.

It is cold underground year-round and the floor is loose sand. The bat closure is strict and non-negotiable - around 3,000 bats of several species winter here, and disturbing them is the one thing the site exists to prevent.

Nearby

Setomaa and the Seto farm museum at Värska are about half an hour east. Suur Munamägi and the Haanja uplands are a similar distance west.