Underground bat caves

The caves of Piusa are the most visited place in Southern-Estonia by turists and Estonians too. Old underground caves are attractive and little bit sinister. But once you are here you’ll fall in love with this ancient and mysterious place.

Named caves like ballrooms

Old underground caves of glass sand are named as the caves of Piusa and they are situated by station of Piusa, left from Valga-Petseri railroad.
Here under pinewood are six deserted mines, which were first founded in 1922.
Caves have numbers and names: Big cave, Good cave, Museum cave, Bride hill cave, Fox cave and Small cave.

The biggest bat colony in Europe

Former mining galleries what are situated in Piusa are developed into hibernating places for bats.
There is a big hibernate colony of bats in Piusa. There were started to number the bats in 1949, then there were found only 22 individual. In 1994 were 2000 bats according to enumeration and in 1999 were already 3500 individual.

From the middle of 1990 is Piusa the biggest known hibernate colony of bats in East Europe. They come to hibernate here even 100 km range and there have been found hibernating seven species of bats. Several of them have been written in Estonian Red Book.

And last but not least: the organization EUROBATS has declared year 2008 International Year of the Bat.

Related links:
Järvakandi glass-factory is the main user of Piusa sand.
More about the Piusa caves.
Pictures of Estonia.
Stay overnight in Piusa Ürgoru Holiday Home.