Tihanyi Forrás Cave

Tihanyi Forrás Cave is one of the caves in Hungary that are specially protected. It is located on the Tihany Peninsula in the Balaton Uplands National Park. It is also described in tourist guidebooks.

Description

It is located in the inner area of Tihany, in the courtyard of the Tihany Abbey, opposite the entrance of the church, in the Csokonai Garden, at an altitude of 186 m above sea level. It is of hydrothermal origin but has become inactive. It was developed for tourism and its entrance is closed with a gridded iron door. The cave is situated in the spring cone on which the former Tihany Castle, and later the abbey church, were built. The original shape of the spring cone can no longer be recognized due to several large-scale constructions that dismantled a significant part of its rock and built elsewhere on it.

Through a stone, barrel‑vaulted entrance one can descend stairs to a cave passage level that is 130 cm lower than the exterior. The cave consists of two interconnected halls and two larger protrusions. The first hall is 5 m long and 4 m wide. Its height varies because of the different sized ceiling vaults: at the vault near the entrance it is 320 cm, then further 200 cm, and at the vault beside the window 400 cm. At the left‑hand end of the first hall, at a height of 290 cm, a 40×50 cm window was built into the natural opening. The side walls have natural protrusions that gradually merge into the ceiling vault. On the ceiling of the first hall two stalagmite clusters can be observed. One starts from the window, runs perpendicular toward the entrance and crosses the elongated vault beside the window. This stalagmite cluster probably determined the formation of that vault.

The other also starts from the window and heads toward the entrance. The second hall is also 5 m long, but only 2.5 m wide and has an average height of 2 m. Its beginning and end are a natural, open cavity, however the middle is artificially widened. From the right‑hand, front part two naturally formed, rising floor‑level, about 1 m low, 170 cm and 270 cm long, protruding niches open. The size of the cave was not given uniformly by the various earlier descriptions; Bertalan Károly (1972) described it as 4 m long, Buckó (1970) as 8 m long, 5 m wide and 3 m high. According to the 1983 survey, based on the internationally accepted cave‑size calculation, its length is 14 m, average width 2.5 m, average height 2.2 m and its volume about 56 m³.

On the cave wall in several places, to the left of the entrance, in the niches and on the ceiling, well‑visible open forms, grooves, channel‑like grooves can be seen, later covered by a thin carbonate encrustation. The artificial widenings reveal the structure of the cone geyser. On the wall opposite the entrance of the first hall a curved layer composed of hydro‑quartzite sheets is visible, on which a massive, high‑temperature water‑derived, calcareous‑alkaline geyser has deposited. Near the entrance and at the end of the second chamber diatomaceous, almandine, yellow opal deposits can be seen. The floor of the cave is formed by a smooth rubble.

The temperature of the large‑entrance, well‑ventilated cave in the 1–3 m thick rock follows the temperature of its surroundings closely. Water appears only rarely, in the form of condensation. Possible excavation of the rubble‑filled floor of the cave would likely uncover the former spring outlet location and its mineral content, and would certainly also contain historical artifacts. The cave equipped with automatic lighting can be viewed through the entrance grille.

The cave occurs in the literature under the names Abbey Spring Cave (Eszterhás 1984), Abbey Spring Cave (Kordos 1984), Abbey Spring Chamber, Abbey‑Spring Chamber (Eszterhás 1984), Cave Chamber beside Tihany Abbey, Csokonai Cave, Spring Cave (Bertalan, Kordos, Országh 1976), Spring Cave (Kordos 1984), Spring Cave (Takácsné, Eszterhás, Juhász, Kraus 1989) and Tihany Spring Cave (Eszterhás 1984). In 1984 the cave was first called Tihany Spring Cave in the literature (Eszterhás 1984).

Research History

The cave was uncovered in 1951 during field clearing at the request and commission of the Hungarian State Institute of Geology by university students and freed from the rubble. Ferenc Bartha led the excavation and prepared the first map of the cave. The Spring Cave is probably only one cavity of the cone. In such a large cone there were certainly several cave‑sized cavities as well. The year 1951 can be regarded only as the year of rediscovery. All signs indicate that it was previously a well‑known and used cave. The natural prominence of the spring cone, with little alteration or reconstruction, formed one of the bastions of the Tihany Castle, and its cave was equipped by the castle guard for its own purposes. After the liberation from the Turks, the monastery regained the monastery that had been turned into a rather ruined castle from the final‑castle garrison. Probably at that time the existence of the cave was forgotten.

The cave forgotten for two hundred years was made known again by the 1951 exploration. Afterwards the Veszprém County Tourist Office built the entrance facing chamber K and equipped it with electric lighting. In 1976 the Tihany Spring Cave, located in the 4400 (Bakony) cave survey area, became a cave of national significance. After the clarification of the cave names in the list of caves of national significance compiled in 1976, on May 30, 1977 the cave located in the Bakony Mountains, Tihany, appears on the list of caves of national significance under the name Spring Cave. In the 1980 first half-year issue of Karst and Cave it was published that the highlighted Spring Cave is located in the 4400 cave survey area (Bakony Mountains and eastern foreland). The Tihany cave has the cave survey number 4463/1. The MKBT Documentation Committee will place at the site, similar to the other caves of highlighted significance, the metal plate bearing the cave survey number of the cave. The metal plate used for entering the cave survey number will be identical to the metal plates of the other caves of highlighted significance.