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The Škocjanske jame Regional park

virtual excursions

The Škocjan Caves are one of those places where people instinctively fall silent—not out of fear, but out of a sense of standing before something that transcends the everyday world. This is a landscape shaped by water over millions of years, and one that humanity has only begun to understand in the last few centuries. In 1986, the Škocjan Caves were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List for their exceptional universal value. With this recognition, Slovenia accepted the responsibility to protect and preserve the area, enshrined in the Act on the Škocjan Caves Regional Park. The park is managed by the public institution Park Škocjanske jame, Slovenia.

The regional park lies in the southwest of the country, on the Classical Karst—the very landscape where karst science was born. It was here that researchers first began to systematically study karst phenomena, and it was here that the term dolina gained international recognition. The Great and Little Dolines, two immense collapse valleys carved by the Reka River just before it disappears underground, became archetypes of karst geomorphology. The park covers 413 hectares of caves, the surface above them, a system of collapse dolines, and the gorge of the Reka River up to the bridge at Škoflje. Its western boundary reaches the Kozina–Divača motorway, the northern boundary includes part of the Divača Karst, and the southeastern edge touches the foothills of the flysch Brkini Hills. The caves lie precisely at the transition from impermeable flysch to permeable limestone—a textbook example of contact karst.

This is a landscape where the greatest concentration of karst features in one place forms a unique natural architecture: caves, dolines, collapse valleys, natural bridges, underground canyons, ponors, shafts, and rock overhangs. Special microclimatic conditions allow Alpine and Mediterranean flora to coexist, creating remarkable biodiversity in a very small area. Human presence is equally layered: archaeological sites, ancient settlements, burial grounds, cave sanctuaries, stone houses, wells, mills, ice pits, and the church of St. Cantianus, after whom the caves are named.

The Škocjan Caves contain 5.8 kilometers of passages, with a vertical difference of 209 meters between the highest and lowest points. They are the largest and most famous natural phenomenon of the Classical Karst. As the ponors of the Reka River shifted through geological time, numerous collapse dolines formed, including the Great and Little Dolines, each plunging 163 meters deep. From the viewpoint above them, the scene is unforgettable: a natural bridge, vast collapse valleys, the dark entrance of Mahorčič Cave, and the immense depth carved by the river.

Once the Reka disappears underground, one of the most spectacular subterranean landscapes on Earth begins. The underground canyon carved by the river often exceeds 100 meters in height. Within it lies what is likely the largest cave chamber in Europe, with a cross-section of 12,000 m² (1.2 hectares). From here, the river continues nearly 40 kilometers beneath the surface, eventually emerging at the Timavo springs in the Gulf of Trieste.

The gorge of the Reka River between the caves and the bridge at Škoflje is one of the longest blind valleys in Slovenia. Over a distance of 2.5 kilometers, the river transitions from flysch to limestone, drops 16 meters in elevation, and receives several tributaries, including the Sušica and Polog. The gorge resembles a canyon, with both plateaus above the left and right banks lying at roughly the same elevation. The riverbed is filled with angular pebbles—some transported from elsewhere, others formed in situ through rockfall and denudation.

The origin of this blind valley remains only partially understood. Several explanations are possible: the gradual thinning and collapse of a former cave ceiling, the transformation of a cave into a roofless canyon, or the incision of a surface river into limestone. What is certain is that beneath the Vremska Valley and the Škocjan Caves lies a network of channels capable of swallowing the entire flow of the Reka whenever it drops below 10 liters per second.

Within the park lie three small settlements: Škocjan, Betanja, and Matavun. Škocjan is particularly striking—a former fortified hilltop settlement, now a cultural monument with stone houses, wells, threshing barns, mills, ice pits, and the church of St. Cantianus. It is a place where natural and cultural heritage form a single, inseparable whole.

I have documented the entire area of the Škocjan Caves Regional Park at various points in time, always comprehensively and with deep respect for its extraordinary character. In 2004, I wrote a provocative essay and created a visual interpretation of the mythological entrance to Hades—framed by the question: “We know where the mythological headquarters of the Greek gods is—Mount Olympus. But do we know where the entrance to Hades lies?” In this context, the Škocjan Caves revealed themselves as a powerful symbolic threshold between worlds.

The most demanding project followed in 2015–2016, when I devoted eight months of fieldwork to an extensive, staged visualization in 360-degree stereo 3D. This was the first—and perhaps still the only—project of its kind in the world to capture such a vast karst landscape in full stereoscopic spatial reality. The project was publicly presented at the IVRPA conference in Quebec, Canada, in 2016, where it drew significant attention as a pioneering fusion of technology, natural science, and cultural heritage.