Vilenica Cave

Cave in Sežana, Slovenia
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Slovene. (February 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
  • View a machine-translated version of the Slovene article.
  • Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
  • Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
  • You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Slovene Wikipedia article at [[:sl:Vilenica]]; see its history for attribution.
  • You may also add the template {{Translated|sl|Vilenica}} to the talk page.
  • For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.
45°40′28″N 13°54′42″E / 45.67444°N 13.91167°E / 45.67444; 13.91167[1]

Vilenica Cave or Vilenica Cave at Lokev (Slovene: Jama Vilenica pri Lokvi) is the oldest show cave in Europe. The first tourists to the cave were recorded in 1633. It is located next to the village of Lokev in the municipality of Sežana on the Karst Plateau in southwestern Slovenia.

Natural environment

Vilenica Cave is more than 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) in length, with a depth of 180 m (590 ft), but tourists are only allowed into the first 450 m (1,480 ft) of the cave.

History

Until the mid-19th century it was known as the biggest, most beautiful, and most frequently visited cave of the Classical Karst. It attracted artists such as Ferdinand Runk and Peter Fendi, who was awarded a gold medal in 1821 for his oil painting of the cave. Later it was surpassed by Postojna Cave.

Since 1986, the annual Vilenica International Literary Festival has taken place in the cave and in the towns and villages of the Karst and elsewhere. The event most commonly happens in the beginning of September. The central part of the festival is the conferral of the Vilenica Prize for literature by the Slovene Writers' Association. The award is bestowed in the cave's Plesna Hall (Plesna dvorana) on an author from Central Europe for his or her achievements in literary and essay writing.[2]

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vilenica Cave.
  1. ^ Jama VILENICA cave(s) Wikimapia
  2. ^ Vilenica.com. The Vilenica Cave homepage published by the Sežana Caving Society, in Slovenian, English, Italian and German.
  • v
  • t
  • e
Settlements
Administrative seat: Sežana
Current
Former
  • Dolenja Brestovica
  • Gorenja Brestovica
The location of the Municipality of Sežana
Landmarks
Notable people
Authority control databases: National Edit this at Wikidata
  • Czech Republic
Stub icon

This Slovenian geography article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

  • v
  • t
  • e