A cliffside Slovenian castle sits on not just a network of secret caves that hid an infamously swashbuckling knight—who successfully held off a full offensive by the Holy Roman Empire for more than a year—but also a cache of buried treasure.
Fitted into the mouth of a cavern in the eastern European countryside, Predjama Castle appears to be part of the mountain in which it’s built.
The castle’s history stretches back to at least 1202, when it was first mentioned in writing. Over the next 200 years, it belonged to a group of Austrian dukes, a fleet of knights, and later, a “rebel knight” called Erazem Lueger.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to the lore, Lueger killed a top commander in the Imperial Army in the honor of his deceased best friend, and was promptly placed on a list of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III's most wanted. That’s when he fled to Predjama Castle, a stunning fortress built 400-feet up the cliffside.
It’s rumored that Lueger also enlisted others to rob wealthy noblemen of the time. For this and for the murder, the king ordered troops to drag him from the castle in the year 1484. But Lueger’s position was strategic and almost foolproof—he controlled the only connection to the outside world, a drawbridge traversing the River Lokva. He outfitted the entryway with holes to pour boiling oil through, and his refuge appeared secure.
For 366 days, the emperor bombarded the castle’s position. Against the odds, Lueger didn’t cave. Despite the wall of soldiers outside, he seemed to have limitless supplies.
To prove this, he apparently mockingly threw fresh cherries at the outside invaders.
But after a year and a day of comfortable hiding, a deceitful servant caved to the enemy’s bribery. In classic tragicomedy, Lueger was allegedly killed by a cannonball while on the toilet.
It wasn’t until later that his strategy was revealed: he had been using a complex six-mile network of tunnels reaching out from his castle to the nearby communities to refresh his stocks of food and defenses.
The structure that can still be visited today wasn’t complete until the 16th century, when the damage from the Roman emperor's onslaught was repaired by an Austrian knight. It was privately owned until the state took control after World War II.
Today, Predjama Castle also hosts a tournament replete with jousting and medieval dueling, to hearken back to its glory days.The Guinness Book of World Records has dubbed it the largest cave castle in the world.The tunnels can be explored with permission from the museum, which rents out equipment for adventurers. The only time the caves are off limits is over the winter when the colony of bats that resides underground goes into hibernation.
But the secret tunnels aren’t the only mystery Predjama is hiding. In 1991, workers discovered a 500-year-old buried treasure hidden in the cellar. The cache consisted of a chalice, goblets, candlesticks and valuables engraved with silver and gold, which have been placed in the National Museum.