Skocjan Caves

The Skocjan Caves are a UNESCO natural wonder, less about pretty formations than sheer scale: the Reka river has carved one of the largest underground canyons in the world, a colossal chamber through which visitors walk on a path high on the wall, crossing a slender bridge over the roaring river far below. It is a genuinely awe-inspiring, cathedral-scale underworld.

History

People have lived around the gorge where the Reka vanishes underground for more than ten thousand years, and after the Bronze Age a cave temple made it a pilgrimage site of importance across the Mediterranean some three thousand years ago. Posidonius of Apamea wrote of the caves in the 2nd century BC, they appear on the Lazius-Ortelius map of 1561 and in Mercator's atlas of 1637, Johann Weikhard von Valvasor described the sinking of the Reka in 1689, and the painter Louis-François Cassas was commissioned in 1782 to paint the Great Collapse Doline. The search for the river's underground course, to bring drinking water to Trieste, led to systematic exploration from 1884: explorers reached Dead Lake in 1890, local men climbed the 60-metre wall of Müller Hall to find Silent Cave in 1904, the caves became a World Heritage Site in 1986, and in 1990 Slovenian divers passed a siphon to find more than 200 metres of new passages (Wikipedia, Škocjan Caves).

The landscape

• The underground canyon - the vast river-carved gorge deep in the cave.
• The Cerkvenik Bridge - the slender bridge high over the roaring river.
• The great chambers - the cathedral-scale halls of the system.
• The collapse dolines - the vast sinkholes where the river enters and leaves.

When to go

Year-round; the cave is cool and constant, so bring a layer. It is seen only on a guided tour, so check times and book ahead in the busy season.

Good to know

It is seen only on a guided tour involving a fair amount of walking, stairs and heights on the path high above the river, so it needs reasonable mobility and a head for heights. Photography is often not allowed inside to protect the cave. It is more about awesome scale than delicate formations.

Nearby

Postojna Cave and Predjama Castle are within reach; the Karst wine region spreads around.

Key facts