Postojna Things to Do

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Photo 1 shows river Pivka that carved Postojna caves. It looks idle but in August 2009, the season had been very dry and the level of water low.

Photo 2 shows the bridge that leads from the parking lot to the entrance into the caves. At 9:30, when we arrived, there were not many visitors

Photo 3 was taken at 11:00, visitors are arriving by hundreds!

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Koncertna Dvorana (the concert cave) is the biggest cave of the Postojna Caves. Here are held concerts that can entertain more than 10000 people. During the Christmas time there is the representation of the living manger.

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This is a very strange animal, the symbol of the caves : the Proteus anguinus, also called the Human Fish.

Proteus anguinus is completely adapted to eternal subterranean darkness as it hides in the depths of underground caves for its whole life. Therefore, the pale skin contains no protective pigment and it is whitish with a pink hue due to the skin capillaries (similar colour to that of Caucasian human beings-hence the creature's name). The tiny eyes can be seen only at the foetal stage, later they are grown over with skin. The head is elongated with a rounded snout. The front legs bear 3, the rear legs 2 toes. The flattened tail used for swimming is markedly shorter than the body. The animal stays in water its entire life and breathes with gills, even though it has rudimentary lungs. Proteus anguinus is approximately 25-30cm long, which makes it the biggest cave animal in the world. At the same time, it is also the only cave adapted vertebrate in Europe.

There are few in the small pool close to the exit, and they are changed every two months, during which they do not eat anything.

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Its the only underground monument in Slovenia as our guide told us but this is one of the biggest caves Ive ever visited! The tour starts with an underground train.It passes through stalagmites and stalactites and in some points you feel the cave presses you :) After that you follow your guide inside the cave for about 2kms learning and watching some really interesting stuff about caves.The temperature inside is about 8-10 degrees so you better have a coat with you.The room where you take the train back is called concert hall and yes a lot of concerts are taking place there.

guided tours every hr 9:00-18:00 May-Sept
every 2hrs 10:00-16:00 Oct-Apr

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Immensum ad antrum aditus! - Enter, traveller, into this immensity! Postojna Cave is a vast cave system. At 20km in length it is one of the largest in the world. You will see 5.7km of the cave, 4km of this will be by cave railway!

The tour starts at the cave railway station. The train takes you through tunnels to the Gothic Hall (richly decorated with stalgmites and stalactites). Onto the Congress Hall and finally to the Great Mountain (Velika Gora). By foot you then follow the passageways, cross the Russian Bridge (built by POW's in 1916) into the 500m long Beautiful Caves (Lepe Jame) where the stalctites and stalagmites are 2 million years old. Onto the Brilliant Passage where "The Brilliant" (natural formation) is found. Next you will go to a pool which contains the "human fish". Lastly you will be led into the Concert Hall (Koncertna Dvorana) - the largest in the system and can accommodate 10,000 people for concerts (which are held here). We happened to be there at the same time as a Barber Shop choir who gave us a performance - wow, the accoustics were amazing. Our children LOVED the Postojna Caves & proteus.

The "human fish" or olm or proteus anguinus is a bit like a salamander. It is the largest (known) permanent cave dwelling vertebrate. About 25 - 30cm in length it has a fin like tail & 4 legs - the front have 3 fingers and the back have 2 toes! The proteus is blind with almost invisible eyes but apparently has a fantastic sense of smell and can detect weak electric fields in the water. It can breathe in and out of the water, it's skin has no pigmentation, they can go for years without eating and do not reach sexual maturiy until 16 or 18!

May to September the tours run hourly and cost 2900/1400 SIT adult/child

The Vivarium - which if you are lucky you'll get to go in and see all the strange, weird and wonderful beasties that live in the caves. Our timing was dreadful, we got there with 1 minute before it closed! I would have loved to have seen it.

If you are visiting Postojna Caves, it is easy to combine with a visit to Predjama Castle, 9 km away. Even if you don't have time to visit the interior, I'd still recommend at least driving by if you are in the area as the setting, built into the side of a cave, is the coolest thing about this castle. It's easy to understand why they thought this was a good place for a fortress/castle, can't get to it from the top, can't get to it from the bottom and the caves provide secret passageways for the residents to elude invaders and get vital supplies. The formal entrance is through a drawbridge.

The 1st castle on this site was thought to have been built in the 12th century. At the time of Erasmus (Erazem) in the 15th century it was operating as a fortress, probably not very pleasant to live in but a safe place to hide from his pursuers. The castle was modified in 1570 by Ivan Kobenzl, the castle was restored to look like it was in his day. In the 1800s it was owned by a count and a prince and is now open for tourism.

If you do have time to visit the interior, I thought it was interesting but not a must see. You can get a combination ticket for the Cave and the Castle and save 2E per person. We spent around 40 minutes here.

See my Predjama page for more information.

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The Caves at Postojna are the #1 tourist attraction in Slovenia, 1 1/2 hour tours are given year round in English, Slovene, Italian and German, some tours are also in French. You can see the time table on the attached website, currently in high season from May-September there are tours every hour from 9am-6pm, less frequently in off season.

The tour starts with a 2km amusement park style train ride that whizzes you through the caves to the start of the walking tour which is broken down into individual groups by language. Our guide wasn't very enthusiastic perhaps she needed a little more sunlight in her daily diet! But she gave us an adequate amount of information on the formations we were seeing as we walked through and gave us the history of the Russian bridge, built in 1916 by Russian prisoners of war. At the end we were treated to a Norwegian chorus that was in our group performing a couple of tunes in the Concert Hall.

Tickets are 18E or you can get a combination ticket if seeing something else in the area. We got a combined ticket for Postojna Caves and Predjama Castle for 23E, a savings of 2E per person, credit cards including Visa accepted.

Our guide explained to us that the primary minerals in the caves in Slovenia were what gave them their colors, white is from calcium, black is from magnesium and red is from iron.

The main feature at the Postojna Cave is the wide variety of stalactites and stalagmites that are found there. They are formed by the dripping over 1000s of years of calcium carbonate and other minerals, stalactites hang from the ceiling, stalagmites grow from the floor. In time many of these formations meet becoming columns.

Some of the interesting formations you'll see at Postojna is thin drips that look like spaghetti; formations that look like curtains, so thin that the light shines through them; large columns where the stalactites meet the stalagmites, two of them are the symbols of the cave, a pillar and one that resembles an ice cream cone and what seems to be a fixture at caves, one that looks like a pipe organ.

And with a little imagination you can see all kinds of things in the formations!