Ialomiţa’s Cave

The most famous cave from Bucegi Mountains, as well as the most important one, is Peştera Ialomiţei [translator’s note: Ialomiţa’s Cave] or Peştera Regilor [translator’s note: Kings’ Cave]. Its importance is rooted in the historical, archaeological, mythological, and geographical springs of the Antiquity.

“At the bottom of Valea Ialomitei, not far from its first beginnings, carved into a rocky wall, higher than 100 m, and in the middle of a wild, humid and dark gorge, crossed by the noisy valley like a storm, there lies the famous and extensively researched Pestera Ialomitei, one of the most important excavations from the Southern Carpathians”. This is how Mihai Haret located the cave in 1924, in his book “Pestera Ialomitei si Casa Pestera” [translator’s note: “Ialomita’s Cave and the Cave Home”]. “Situated at the very geometrical centre of the Bucegi Mountains”, he further says, “at a great crossroads and at an altitude rising gradually from 1,600 to 2.000 m, the region of the cave – through the richness of geological horizons, splendid monuments of nature, astutely scattered around the valley – through the harmony of its interesting shapes and landscapes, as well as its impressive position, has always been the object of public’s admiration and the attraction of scientists”.

Pestera Ialomitei is situated in Moroeni, Dâmbovita county, on the right flank of Cheile Ialomitei [translator’s note: Ialomita’s Gorge], at an altitude of 1,660 m, carved in the Jurassic chalkstones of the Batrâna Mountain.

Its name comes from Ialomita river, springing 10 km away from the glacier cirque called Obârsia Ialomitei, located below Vârful Gavanele [translator’s note: Gavanele Peak] (2,479 m), found 600 m away from Vârful Omu and at a smaller distance from Vârful Ocolit [translator’s note: Ocolit Peak], also called Bucura Dumbrava.