Drienovská Cave

Situated on the southern border of the Jasovská Plateau, northerly from the Drienovec village at the mouth of the Miglinc Valley. It is a spring river cave formed in the Mesozoic Midlle Triassic pale Wetterstein limestones of the Silica Nappe, somewhere also in breccia or limestone conglomerates. The underground stream flows through the lower parts of the cave forming lakes, cascades and smaller waterfalls in some places. The distinct river modelling is visible on ceiling and side wall channels, as well as floor river notches and hollows. The riverbed passage is somewhere decorated with flowstone curtains, stalactites, stalagmites and columns. The upper parts of the cave are formed by mighty dome spaces of breakdown character. The cave is formed in four developmental levels. The length is 1,348 m and vertical span 85 m.

The upper parts are remarkable with occurrence of crystalline gypsum crusts and druses of calcite with crystals as much as 9 to 12 cm big, sporadically also 15 cm. Among the most interesting forms of flowstone fills belong pisolite, coral and dentritic forms, originally made of transparent aragonite and in places of recrystalized calcite.

The cave belongs among the most important chiropterological localities in Slovakia. It forms together with the Jasovská Cave one harmonic unit of underground shelters on the eastern edge of the Slovak Karst, to which several communities of bats are bound. As much as 13 bat species were recorded in the winter season here. Regularly wintering and most abundant bats are the Meditteranean Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus euryale), Greater Horseshoe Bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum), Greater Mouse-eared Bat (Myotis myotis) and Common Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pipistrellus). During the summer season an exceptional mixed reproduction colony of the Greater Mouse-eared Bat and rare Schreiber's Bat (Miniopterus schreibersii) occurs here. For both species it means one of the two underground locations with known summer and winter occurrence.

The cave was allegedly discovered in the second half of the 19th century by removing the talus cone at the karst spring. The upper parts of the cave were surveyed by cavers from Košice in 1984, who found here traces of older but unknown discoverers. The further continuation of the cave behind the cave-in in the Stratený Dome was found by Košice cavers in 1985. Archeological discoveries found in the cave, come from the Neolithic (Bukk-Mountain Culture) and Bronze Age (Piliny Culture).