Cuevas de Škocjan

The Škocjan Caves were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986 and lie in south-western Slovenia, in the Kras region, the district that gives karst its name in every language in the world. The regional park that protects them was established in 1996.

The Reka river disappears underground here and has cut out over millennia an exceptional subterranean system: the main chamber, Martel's Chamber, is some one hundred and forty-six metres high and more than three hundred long, and is reckoned the largest known underground canyon in Europe. The river still runs along the bottom and, in flood, its level can rise by tens of metres, a spectacular phenomenon that has required the visitor routes to be built far above the watercourse.

The site also includes two great collapse dolines, Velika and Mala dolina, with vertical walls and a microclimate of their own at the bottom that allows Mediterranean vegetation on the rims and alpine vegetation at the base to coexist. The caves are home to the olm, the blind cave amphibian endemic to the Dinaric karst, and to bat colonies. Škocjan is also a Ramsar site and a biosphere reserve under the MAB programme.