Predjama Castle in Slovenia is the world’s largest cave castle and is heavily featured on social media due to its uniquely photogenic setting. The location for various films and TV series, including Witcher, this 800 year old castle has an extensive network of caves behind its fortified exterior.
Visiting Predjama Castle
The area around Predjama is just beautiful, alpine meadows, low roofed buildings and low intensity farming combined with just not many people. We came from Lake Bled and after driving through Postojna the roads were smaller but still perfectly decent to drive on and the castle was well signposted. Just before you reach the castle there is a sharp turn down to the large (chargeable) car park and then steps up to the village. There are the inevitable tourist shops and cafes on the street up to the castle and it’s a nice pause before or after your visit.
You have the option of just getting a castle ticket or getting a combined ticket with the Postojna caves and we chose that option, the caves certainly didn’t disappoint. The official site for the tickets is here. I would definitely recommend the combined ticket and also try and visit on a weekday and arrive early.
There is also the option, if you book in advance, of taking a guided tour of the caves, including the tunnel used by the castle defenders to get supplies in from the outside world.
My Experience
Our visit here was as part of a larger road trip through Slovenia, Crotia, Italy and San Marino, detailed in my blog here. We arrived in Predjama to find it absolutely packed with tourists – how dare they! It seems to be a favourite for coach trips with coaches outnumbering cars when we arrived. To be fair, we did visit on a Saturday and due to the drive from Lake Bled we didn’t arrive until about 11AM.
I almost left after about 5 minutes as it took that long to shuffle across the drawbridge, along a short corridor and into the first room with everyone listening to their audio guides. I headed up some stairs and we just made our way around the upper floors until the ground floor was quieter. Deb abstained from climbing the steps into the main caves so I did that solo but not much to see other than their size and use for storing provisions.
The armoury and a couple of the interior rooms were interesting and nicely laid out to give an impression of how it would have been. The fresh water was unusual too – supplied by dripping water in the caves. There were plenty of information boards and the audio guide for those who chose it but the interior, for me, wasn’t that interesting. It wasn’t helped by the huge number of people so the castle is really a victim of it’s own success.
It would be tempting to visit, park up for €3 and just take some pictures from the outside rather than pay the €17 entrance fee. After leaving I did walk down towards the river and lower cave system and it certainly is a beautifully situated and photogenic castle.
Predjama Castle Photo Gallery
History
Predjama Castle was probably built in the 12th century but was first mentioned in the second half of the 13th century. It was built in an area that was controlled by the town of Aquilea but was contested by the Counts of Gorizia. In those times the castle was called Jama Castle (Jama translates to cave).
In 1350 the castle was taken by Austrian dukes. In 1398 Aquilean troops sieged and set fire to the castle. Later on knights from the East-Tyrolean city of Lienz became owners of the castle, which they called Luegg Castle. So they called themselves Lords of Lienz and Luegg.
In 1478 the castle became the property of the knight Erazem. He was probably the most famous inhabitant of Predjama Castle. In 1483 he killed a Marshall Pappenheim at the Vienna court during an argument. This Marshall was however a relative of the Austrian Emperor so Erazem fled to his castle to escape punishment. The castle was then sieged on the Emperor’s orders by Gaspar Ravbar, Lord of Trieste. Ravbar tried to starve Erazem to death but was surprised to notice that Erasmus seemed to have an unlimited supply of fresh food. Finally Erasmus was killed by a cannonball. Later it became known that Erasmus had been provided with food through a secret passage through the caves.
In 1567 the castle was bought by Hans Kobenzl, an Austrian knight from Kärnten. He rebuilt and enlarged the castle and it is mostly the result of this building campaign that we see today. His descendants remained owners of the castle until 1810. And because this important noble family mostly resided in Austria the castle was kept in good shape but escaped further large rebuilding campaigns. Two more owners followed until the castle was confiscated by the state after World War II.
References
The official castle site, where you can buy tickets is here.
The history above is taken from the comprehensive castles.nl site here.
The Wiki site here has a more comprehensive history.