The Vranjača Cave

Everyone can tell their own story about the Vranjača Cave. Mine started in 1985 when I was a tour guide for Dalmacijaturist-Regular Tour, coming there with tourists once a week.

We were warmly welcomed by a friendly man who was all in one, a key keeper, caretaker and owner.

The central gallery 

We, the guides had our own story that began on the entrance plateau and then we went down following 360 steps into the fairytale world of colorful stalactites and stalagmites. We gave the halls names and from the formations stacked on the rocks we could see different shapes.

Like a chameleon  

All of this today is presented by the son of the same dear man, the inhabitant of the hamlet of Punde, who tells a story intertwined with the memories of his ancestors and the knowledge of various researchers who have proven it here.

Vlado Punda and me

Vranjača Cave is a real karst cave, located at 452m above the sea level. The canals go deep down, but the maximum depth we can reach is 107m. We know that through numerous channels it is connected to the river Cetina. It is a pleasant temperature inside, always 15 degrees Celsius, like in some well organised wine cellar. 

Fantastic colours 

The entrance part has been known to the locals since ancient times, while the other part was discovered in 1903 by the owner of the property on which the cave is located, Mr. Stipe Punda, who has discovered it while looking for a wounded pigeon and passing through a narrow passage after it. It is interesting that we can recognise even a shape of two pigeons standing on the stalagmites form.

Two pigeons 

Vranjača Cave consists of two large halls. The large entrance hall measuring approximately 65 by 20 meters does not contain deposits in the cave. A narrow corridor leads to the sort of a gallery, which is about 100 m long and 60 m wide, this gallery is a hall with an abundance of stalagmites, stalactites and stones in various shapes and colours. The spectacle of shapes and colours starts. 

A spectacle of shapes and colours 

Umberto Girometta, professor of science, mountaineer, geologist, zoologist, photographer and promoter of the beauties of Dalmatia was also a speleologist and the founder of speleology in Split, states after his research on the cave:

"Among so many caves, which I explored in central Dalmatia, I did not find more favorable living conditions in the troglodyte age than in Vranjača. Noon-oriented opening, a spacious, relatively dry underground cavity with lots of light and a constant temperature of 15° C, protection from the cold Bora, and the proximity of water, forests and mountains, in which various species of postdiluvial animals certainly lived, along with the cave bear. Indeed, they are a blessing to the people of that time. ”

This was confirmed during the widening of the narrow passage from the atrium to the interior of the cave in 1929, and experimental soundings in 1934 and 1935. Girometta then found that the cave was inhabited in ancient times and that the first cultural layers date from the early Neolithic era. On that occasion, various earthenware and bone fragments were found with several layers, and in the deepest layers, the antlers of Cervus dama and the jaw of Ursus spelaeus, in several fragments of the tibia and femur. In 1913, Girometta discovered a new species of cave spider in the cave, which was named Stalita Giromettai.

After clay analysis in 1972, it was discovered that the cave is about 65 million years old. It is full of minerals and therefore so colourful and changing in colours. In some period of time it can have more white colours because of the silicone, then it can become more black, or red of bauxite, then it comes magnesium ….

1 mm of stalactites and stalagmites after 35 years of growth gives us impression of power of time and of values of life.

More info about the cave, as well as about working hours, you can find here

All materijal, including photos & videospots by Darka