Martinovics-hegyi Pince Cave

The Martinovics-hegyi Pince Cave is one of the small-sized caves located in the Buda Hills, in Budapest District XII.

Description

The cave is located on Kis-Sváb Hill, which lies within the Danube–Ipoly National Park. (The hill was named after Ignác Martinovics in 1950. The name Kis-Sváb Hill was restored in 1991.) The cave’s two entrances are situated at an altitude of 210 m a.s.l. beneath the rock wall of the D side of the former quarry on the eastern part of the hill, and they were created artificially. The entrances start flat and then quickly lead into a large chamber (7 × 4 m² floor area and 3.5 m high). The cave’s host rock is Eocene limestone.

The cave may have been developed as a shelter. Brick walls can be observed inside it, whose purpose is unknown (preservation, separation?). Near the smaller entrance bounded by brick walls there is a few‑meter‑long section that can be considered a natural cave cavity. Most likely, on this basis, the artificial chamber was created along it, although it is possible that it was only accidentally intersected. The floor of the cavity, consisting of a ceiling fissure and several dome‑shaped chambers, and one side are completely missing, having been excavated. It has few formations. It may continue downward, which would be worth verifying.

In written works this cave may have been called the Little Sváb Hill quarry crystal cavity (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1973–1974), Little Sváb Hill quarry rock cavity (Kordos 1984), Little Sváb Hill crystal cavity (Bertalan 1976), Crystal Cave (Pápa 1943), Crystal Cave (Pápa 1957), Crystal Cellar (Bertalan 1976), Martinovich Hill cave (Józsa 1963), Martinovich Hill cave (Kordos 1984), Martinovics Hill crystal cavity (Bertalan 1976) and Martinovics Hill cavity (Sásdi 1993). The name Two‑hole Cave (Nyerges 2005) is certainly another name for the Martinovics Hill Cellar Cave. In 2005 the cave was called Martinovics Hill Cellar Cave for the first time in its literature (Nyerges 2005).

History

In a publication by Sándor Koch in 1939 it is mentioned that blasting in the limestone mines located on Martinovics Hill and in Hűvösvölgy opened a crystal cavity (Koch Sándor as a junior student). On the walls of the limestone cavity hundreds of brown‑yellow, translucent calcite crystals shone. The rock was densely covered side by side with calcite crystals. Among the almost equally sized crystals a few well‑formed decorative specimens stood out. If Sándor Koch was lucky, they also found pieces that were covered with yellow, small, tabular barite crystals, but very rarely there were also colorless, tiny cubic fluorite crystals hidden among the small calcite crystals.

In Miklós Pápa's 1943 study it is readable that the Crystal Cave on Little Swabian Hill is interesting, in which even recently wanderers settled, who robbed those traveling on the deserted roads (in the evenings). The cavity can only be crawled into by lying on one's back at its low entrance. Miklós Pápa first visited it on a weekday afternoon. On that afternoon Miklós Pápa's party saw shabby clothing, candle remnants and a straw bedding in the cave. The second time they visited the cave was on a Sunday morning. When they tried to climb into the cave on Sunday morning, then one after another three figures resembling prison inmates, dressed in ragged clothing, emerged from the cave. Later the police sealed the cave. According to the Budai Mountains guidebook published in 1957, the beautiful Crystal Cave is in one of the mines of Martinovics Hill, which has been filled. In the 1958 book *Budapest Natural Pictures*, in the section about the János Hill–Hárs Hill group and the caves of the Csíki Hills, it is written that in the limestone mines of Martinovics Hill several karst passages have been uncovered, in which beautiful calcite and other crystals have deposited at several points.

The 1960 Karst and Cave Research Bulletin mentions that Sándor Koch observed an interesting mineral association in the small cavities of Martinovics Hill. Among the yellow calcite-scallenoid veins he found fluorite crystal clusters and goethite needles composed of 0.3–0.6 mm crystal needles. Famous mineral deposits are the limestone fissures and small cavities of Martinovics Hill. Only a few of the cavities reach, or approach, a size walkable by humans, therefore they are not cave occurrences. On the calcite crystals from the non‑cave deposit of Martinovics Hill, crystalline quartz was detected, which occurs in the Buda Mountains only here. The fluorite occurrence on Martinovics Hill is not of a cave nature.

The 1963 Karst and Cave Research Bulletin, fascicles 1–2, states that members of the Szabó József Geological Technical School Cave Research Group led a field trip in 1962 to the cave located on Martinovics Hill. According to the cave name index of the 1963 volume, the cave mentioned in fascicles 1–2 is the Martinovich‑hegyi‑barlang. A short description appears in the 1964 book *Geological Excursions around Budapest*, which says that locals called the large stone quarry on the hill a crystal cave based on one or two large cave‑like cavities lined with crystals. The 1966 book written by Sándor Koch discusses the cracks and small cavities in the hill, but the author does not use the word cave for the openings in the hill. The larger fissures were of a crystal‑cellar character. According to the Budai Mountains guidebook published in 1966, the Szabó József Geological Technical School speleologists carried out exploratory work in 1962 in the Crystal Cave, whose entrance is in one of the stone mines of Martinovics Hill.