Škocjan Caves

CavesDivača, Kras (Karst),Slovenia

One of the largest underground river canyons on Earth, in Slovenia, where a river vanishes at a cliff and thunders through halls 146 metres high.

September·Peaking now

Sep–Nov

Autumn brings torrential rain, and the Reka river swells back to a roar. November is often its fiercest, when floods sometimes climb tens of metres up the gorge. The full circuit runs through September; after that the route is shortened to the exit through the collapsed sinkhole, and tours thin out.

Year-round The vast underground river canyon and its bridge over the roaring Reka stay a steady 12°C year-round, visited any season on a timed guided tour.

The Škocjan Caves are one of the largest underground river canyons on Earth, in the Kras region of southwestern Slovenia, and a river vanishes at the foot of a cliff to make them. The Reka crosses a bare limestone plateau, goes under at the base of the rock, and thunders on through halls up to 146 metres high. This is the country that gave science the word karst. For a long time nobody could prove where this one went. The disappearance starts at the edge of Škocjan village, where two huge sinkholes have collapsed. The Reka runs through those green-walled pits in the open, under stone arches, before it enters the dark. Your visit begins in the silent part, halls hung with stalactites and rising stalagmites built drip by drop, the calcite glowing amber under low lamps. Then the sound arrives. The path comes out onto a gorge of black rock with the river churning at the bottom. It crosses on the Cerkvenik Bridge, a slender span some 45 metres up, with the walls climbing out of the lamplight above you. The galleries that carry you there are not natural ledges. Between 1884 and 1905 crews cut more than ten kilometres of path and steps into the sheer walls, and those are the trails still in use. Past the bridge the noise falls away behind you and the river gathers in a still hall, where daylight dropping through a chimney in the rock lays a green sheen across the water. In the flooded passages lives the olm, a blind salamander so pale and pink that karst villagers, finding them washed out by floods, took them for baby dragons. The answer came from dye. Poured into the sinking Reka, it turned up at the Timavo springs near the Gulf of Trieste, on the Adriatic coast of Italy, proving the two are one river. Between the sink and the spring lies one of the longest underground water courses in Europe.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Bring a warm layer and grippy shoes — the passages stay near 12°C all year and the stone is wet and slick, even when it is hot and dry outside.
Cameras are banned on the main canyon tour — save your photos for the entrance dripstone halls and the open-air path around the collapsed dolines, where they are allowed.
The Reka runs loudest after rain — for the fullest waterfalls and the most thunderous river, come in spring or late autumn rather than dry midsummer.
Tours leave only at fixed times and sell out — book ahead in summer and take an early slot to walk the canyon with fewer people around you.

Things to do

1
Cross the Cerkvenik Bridge over the canyon
Step onto the Cerkvenik Bridge, a slender span flung across the gorge some 45 metres above the Reka. The river thunders in the dark below, and the lit passage stretches away to enormous size on both sides. Getting there means switchbacking down narrow paths hewn into the canyon's vertical wall, where at every turn the river and the huge passage reappear from a new angle.
2
Stand in the river hall where daylight falls
In the still, pooled hall the Reka slides by almost silently, and daylight dropping through a chimney in the rock lays a green sheen across the water. The lamplit path traces the shore past one of the cave's quietest reaches.
3
Walk the great dripstone halls
The first stretch of the tour winds through halls hung with stalactites and rising stalagmites built drip by drop over thousands of years. Under low lighting the calcite columns glow amber, and the sheer size of the cave slowly reveals itself.
4
Walk the open canyon of the collapsed dolines
In the open air at the bottom of the two collapsed sinkholes, follow the Reka as it runs between sheer limestone walls. Mossy boulders and stone arches stand around you, green slopes climb to the rim far above, and for this short stretch the underground river runs under open sky.

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Nearby

78 km