Cave discovered spanning into Italy

In another proof that nature knows no national boundaries, a cave has recently been discovered in the Sežana area, southwest, straddling the Slovenian-Italian border. It has been hailed as the biggest such discovery in 20 years.

Located in the Orlek area near Sežana, the cave was discovered by Matej Husu, a member of the local caving association who is credited with finding several unmapped karst caves, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

While the entrance is in Slovenia, a large part of the cave is located in Italy. So far, cave explorers have managed to go 175 metres underground and map 265 metres of passageways, but there is still work to be done as the system spans further on.

The draught felt at the entrance led them to suspect that an underground part of the Reka River, or the Timavo in Italian, may run through or near the cave.

"There is roughly an additional 150 metres until the Reka River, but we ran out of rope on our last exploration. So we will have to wait until our next visit to continue exploring the cave," Husu's father, Ludvik, also an experienced caver, told the Slovenian Press Agency.

"I look for new caves when the ground temperature is low and it is around 8 degrees Celsius in the cave. That is the most ideal time to do that as warm air blows or evaporates from the cave," Matej Husu recently told the regional newspaper Primorske Novice.

And it was precisely the slivers of mist hanging over the cave entrance that led to his latest discovery at the beginning of this year.

Now named after Matej, the cave features a chamber and many various dripstones, which seem to be intact. Hailing their member's feat on their Facebook profile, the Sežana Caving Association said the discovery was the biggest in 20 years.

There are great many caves in Slovenia's karst region, many yet unmapped or unexplored. The country is considered a pioneer in cave exploration and karst science, and the Slovenian Speleological Association's official number of recorded caves, last updated in mid-2024, is at some 15,500.