Postojna Cave - Postojnska jama

- Slovenia

Postojna Cave (Postojnska jama) is Europe's most visited show cave. It is a karst cave system and the world's 2nd longest cave system, after Migovec, also in Slovenia. The system is 24.12 km long and at most 115m deep. The river Pivka created the caves. Postojna Caves is only a 40 minute drive from Ljubljana, just outside Postojna, a small town with 16,000 inhabitants. It was under Italian rule 1918-1943.

We went there by a tour guide, a very funny guy, Vladmir that told many stories and was somewhat of a Slovenian Borat, but with much knowledge! He was great and made our drive to the caves memorable and picked up us at our hotel.

A small electric train (gas train until 1945) takes you from the entrance building and through the cave, passing very narrow stalagmite »roof« and a hall with chandeliers. The rails were laid already in 1872 and the train and rail is much smaller then usual ones, it is more similar to amusement park train then commercial trains. You ride the train for us much as about 25 minutes to the point where the walking tour begins, and when you go back to the entrance, you take the train back.
Once there a guided tour takes you on a walking tour through the passages of the cave.
The guide was a woman that told about the cave, but it was sometimes hard to hear and if you want to take photos it is easy to be left behind, since it went really fast. Sometimes the cave is very high, with views high up on bridges and passages. During World War I, Russian war prisoners were forced to build a bridge above a chasm. The caves are beautifully illuminated in yellow and red.
A rare animal, the endemic olm, lives in the cave. It only needs to eat every 25th year! It could be seen living in glass boxes, but not to be photographs.
There is a Concert Hall with fantastic acoustics, that can host 10,000 people.
The caves where first described in the 17th century by Valvasor from Carnolia (today's Slovenia), but graffitti from 1213 has been found inside. But not until 1819 the caves became known as a tourist attraction.
Since 2014, Postojna has the largest permanent exhibition about the cave and karst phenomena around the world. The cave has the world’s only underground post office, and the end of the tour stops at an underground tourist shop in the big hall. The stalagmite Brilliant is the symbol of Postojna Cave.

To visit both Postojna Caves and the Predjama Castle, that is a must, it is highly recommended to go through some of the guided tours, such as Viatour. You can arrange this trip on your own if you have a car, but if not, it is very expensive to take the train to the village of Postojna from Ljubljana, despite it is only 40 minutes away. On top of that you have to walk from the train to the entrance of the cave and then there are 900km left to Predjama, and shuttle buses only go there during high season so it will be both much cheaper and way more convenient to go with a guided tour, as we did, that most likely will pick you up at your hotel.