Postojna Cave, Slovenia

Slovenia is 40% hills and underneath them are many limestone caves--I wanted to see tunnels which exist under a number of castles, but my spouse vetoed that plan. Slovenia has restored most of their castles, and as a rule, the men in my family do not enjoy a castle that retains its roof. I do enjoy a castle that features furniture and curtains, but it was not to be this time. So we settled on Postojna Cave. It is a big tourist attraction, but deservedly so. The outside of the cave is like coming up to an amusement park, but don't be fooled--the cave is a natural wonder, which has been largely unharmed by all the hoopla taking place outside it.

The Postojna Cave is a 20-km long karst cave system, a web of underground passages, galleries and chambers, which has in almost 200 years of active tourism been visited by over 33 million people accompanied by experienced cave guides. It is both the largest cave of the Classical Karst and the show cave with the largest numbers of visitors in Europe. Throughout its history it has posed a great challenge for daring explorers who have shown enormous effort and persistence and managed to penetrate further and further into the underground world. The most interesting passages were in 1818 discovered by Luka Čeč and no later than a year after the cave was already set up as a show cave.

The far-sighted cave management deserves credit for the fact that it did not take long for all the newly discovered parts of the cave to be equipped for large numbers of visitors. Prior to that, the visitors had only been able to access the passages not far from the entrance, where signatures of visitors to the cave have been recorded since the 13th century onwards. In 1872, railway tracks were laid in the cave and in 1884 electricity was installed. Nowadays visitors can satisfy their curiosity by learning about how the caves came to existence, by having a look at the passages and chambers, and above all by looking at stalagmites rising up from the floor of the cave and stalactites hanging down from its roof, how they are joined as pillars, creased as curtains and lined up in all kinds of fantastic forms. The cave is cold--48 degrees year round--so wear a jacket for the visit. Part of the tour of the cave is done on the train (a 2.5 km trip into the depths of the cave, well lit and very beautiful) and part of it on foot (an easy 1 km walk, with some up and down, but at a very slow pace). Spectacular place!