Devil's Throat Cave, Show cave in Trigrad, Bulgaria

Devil's Throat is a show cave in the Western Rhodopes near Trigrad. Its main chamber, the Roaring Hall, measures 110 m long, 40 m wide and up to 35 m high, and holds the highest underground waterfall on the Balkan Peninsula, dropping 42 m. Visitors enter through a 150 m artificial gallery and climb 301 steps past the waterfall to the surface.

The cave began as a river that fell 42 metres underground, creating the Roaring Hall, which is 110 metres long, 40 metres wide and up to 35 metres high. In 1962 Radostin Chomakov, Nikola Korchev and Elena Padareva reached this hall but lacked equipment to continue. In 1970 divers Siana Ljutzkanova and Evstati Jovchev disappeared in the sump below the waterfall.

Local stories link this place to the ancient myth of Orpheus descending into the underworld to save his beloved. The connection between the cave and this legend remains part of how people talk about and experience the location today.

Visitors enter through a 150-metre artificial gallery to the base of the waterfall, then climb 301 steps past it to the surface. The tourist route covers 350 metres of the 1 km cave, and the temperature stays around 8 °C, so warm clothing is needed.

Dye experiments showed that water takes more than ninety minutes to travel from one opening to the other, a short distance underground. In 1970, divers Siana Ljutzkanova and Evstati Jovchev disappeared in the sump below the waterfall; neither they nor their equipment were found.