Geopark Karavanke

Do you know what the ground is hiding under your feet?

On your wanderings on the highest peaks of Karavanka, you will find the remains of sea snails, sea lilies and even ichthyosaur bones, which bear witness to the rich life of the former Tetis Sea. At the bottom of this, millions of years ago, sedimentary rocks began to form, which today form most of the surface of the Karavanke geopark. The submarine volcano Smrekovec once erupted here, and the Adriatic and Eurasian plates "crushed" on the seabed. In doing so, they raised a mass of rocks from the seabed, which today form one of the longest mountain ranges - the Alps. The result of their collision is a Periadriatic fault zone, which runs hundreds of kilometers long, which runs right over the Karavanke Geopark and extends deep below its surface.

The Karavanke Geopark also boasts wonderful minerals that are rarely found elsewhere in the world - orange wulfenite, brown dravite, white calcite, silver galena, often overlooked sphalerite, as well as mercury. Some of them were once used to advantage as ore under Peca and Obir, but today they can be admired in museums.

The surface as we see it today was formed over many long millions, and the mighty forces of nature also shaped the extraordinary stalactite caves in Obir. The landscape has been inhabited by unique plants such as the zois bellflower, the carnivorous sundew or gentian. And finally, there are locals here who live with nature in such a way that they will discover these secrets for a long time after them...

The Karavanke Geopark is part of the European and global network of geoparks under the auspices of the UNESCO organization.