As a very mountainous country, Bulgaria cannot complain from a lack of interesting caves. Formed by nature and usually shaped by thousands of years of human and animal habitation, Bulgaria’s caves will take you on a journey into a fantastic underworld that is quite unlike life on the surface.
From a cave that looks just like a female vulva to an underground wine tasting chamber, kashkaval tourist presents 7 mysterious caves in Bulgaria!
1. Minecraft in the real world: Devetashka Cave
Minecraft in the real world: Devetashka Cave. Photo credit: Martin Bonov.
With its massive halls and unreal gaps in the ceiling, the Devetashka Cave (Деветашка пещера) looks like a landscape straight out of a sandbox video game like Minecraft! The cave was discovered in 1921 near the village of Devetaki not far from Lovech in north central Bulgaria.
Due to its enormous size, it had been used by the Bulgarian state for storing foods and petrol before becoming a secretive military site. And in 2011, the Devetashka Cave was the setting for a few scenes from the star-studded Hollywood blockbuster The Expendables 2, making it famous worldwide.
2. Shaped like a vulva: Womb Cave
Shaped like a vulva: Utroba Cave. Photo credit: Ivo Filipov, Wikipedia.
Yes, you read that right, the Womb Cave (Утроба, Utroba) in the Rhodope Mountains bears an uncanny resemblance to the female genitalia! This is not exactly a coincidence though… there’s evidence that the cave’s opening was shaped by the ancient Thracians around 1000 BC. The cave hosted a Thracian sanctuary to female fertility at the time.
Incredibly, the Womb Cave is designed in such a way that a ray of sunlight enters the cave at such an angle that it goes into the rock womb and hits the middle of the altar directly, symbolically inseminating it. Feel like exploring this vulva-shaped cave? Then head for southeastern Bulgaria or specifically the isolated village of Nenkovo near Kardzhali.