Between the villages of Slivje and Markovščina, along the Kozina – Rijeka road, there are two approximately 40 m deep chasms connected by a natural gallery. In winter, the outside air descends into the larger one and through the smaller one, the warmer cave air is expelled. The latter condenses upon contact with the outside, which appears as a column of “smoke”. The locals assumed that it came from the devil’s meat smoking room or smokehouse. The smokehouse is a flow cave over 9 kilometers long and over 228 m deep with tunnels on two floors. The upper ones are dry and well-buried, with arranged tourist trails. A stream flows through the lower ones, which sinks into the blind valley of the Velike Loče and flows into the source of the Rižana river.
The greatest exceptional feature of the cave and its surroundings is the “school collection” of karst phenomena, different stalactite formations for the Guinness Book of Records and evidence of human coexistence with nature and the past.
The visit begins with a descent along a comfortable tourist trail to the dance hall at the bottom of the 39 m deep entrance abyss. In the glow of headlights, visitors head to the White Hall with numerous anemolites, and in the opposite direction past the 22 m high stalactite columns of the Cyclops, which are among the highest in Europe, to the remains of a water supply system 100 m below the surface. In the middle of the descent, the path starts towards the ‘’Fairy Hall’’. Next come the ‘’Marmite’’ and ‘’Podorna’’ halls, with one of the largest stalactite curtains in Slovenia, and the hall named after the sigma pans that cover the bottom. Here the tunnel turns from thick-bedded to flat limestone with a bitumen smell. The next hall was “given” its name by the slag formations on the ceiling, resembling painter’s palettes. A conglomerate with pebbles of flysch sandstone is exposed in front of the ‘’China Hall’’, in which the edge of the slag pan is located, reminiscent of a miniature Great Wall of China. In the ‘’Last Hall’’, the visit ends in front of the slag pit, which closed the tunnel. After returning from the cave, it is worth stopping at the church of the village Slivje with frescoes depicting negative characters from biblical stories. From the scenic road towards village Mrše, a view opens up from the Brkini villages squeezed onto the edge of blind valleys to the slag-covered karst of Čičarija.
You can get refreshments in nearby taverns, rural tourism and horse-riding centers, such as the village of Slope.
You can find out this and more every Sunday at 3:30 pm, when cave guides take you underground.
By appointment, call 031 625 004 or email: info@dimnice.si . We also organize treks into the water tunnel or nearby “non-tourist” caves.