Dobšinská Ice Cave

Dobšinská holds around a hundred and ten thousand cubic metres of ice, in floors up to twenty-six metres thick, columns and frozen waterfalls, kept by a shape that traps cold air and never lets it out. It was found in 1870 and lit electrically as early as 1887. It forms part of the Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst, inscribed as World Heritage in 1995 and extended in 2000 to include this cave.

History

Shepherds and hunters had long known its entrance as the Cold Hole, and the royal mining engineer Jenő Ruffinyi explored the cave with Gustáv Lang and Andrej Mega on 15 June 1870; it opened to visitors a year later, and in 1887 it became the first cave in Europe lit by electricity. At that time ice was reported to cover 7,171 of its 8,874 known square metres, with a volume then estimated at 125,000 cubic metres and up to 26.5 metres thick, kept frozen because the floor slopes down from a north-facing entrance and traps the winter cold; the cave itself is estimated to be 250,000 years old. Its visitors have included Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1884, Tsar Ferdinand I of Bulgaria in 1890 and Fridtjof Nansen in 1900, and since 2000 it has been part of the Caves of Aggtelek Karst and Slovak Karst World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Dobšiná Ice Cave).

The landscape

• The ice floor - a mass of ice in layers up to twenty-six metres thick.
• The ice columns - frozen pillars and cascades through the main chamber.
• The cold trap - the cave shape that holds cold air and preserves the ice.
• The early electric light - installed here in 1887, among the first anywhere.

When to go

The cave is open from May to September only. Temperatures inside are below freezing in places, so warm clothing is essential in any month. Tours book out in summer.

Before you go

It is open for only part of the year and closed entirely from October to April. The climb up from the car park takes twenty minutes and the cave floor is slippery ice. The ice mass has been shrinking measurably.

Nearby

Slovak Paradise is north, and Dobsina is south-east.

Key facts