Lokvarka Cave is the deepest show cave in Croatia, tucked into the slopes of Kameni vrh mountain in Gorski Kotar. Visitors descend around 75 metres into the earth along the developed tourist route, though the full cave system plunges to an astonishing 275 metres.

Inside, thick layers of Jurassic limestone have shaped a stunning array of stalactites, stalagmites and columns, with the temperature holding steady around 8°C and humidity at 100% year-round. In colder winter months, when the cave is closed to visitors, the entrance area fills with striking ice formations - club-shaped, egg-shaped and mushroom-shaped ice stalagmites. It's a place of contrasts: cool, silent depths beneath the green, forested hills of Gorski Kotar above.

How to get there

• Lokve - the cave lies about 2 km east of the village centre, right next to the Zagreb-Rijeka motorway
• Delnice - roughly 5 km away, the nearest larger town

Practical information

• Visits are guided only, following a marked route through the first 4 of the cave's 6 levels
• The site is managed by the Javna ustanova Priroda as a protected geomorphological natural monument
• The cave is closed to visitors during the colder winter season

In 1996, researchers discovered here a previously unknown endemic beetle species, Croatodirus ozimeci - to this day found nowhere else in the world except Lokvarka Cave.