Top 8 Caves in Chko Lužické Hory

To the Dark Tilke As far as I know, the Dark Tilke is a former quarry. Stones for the construction of the Jonsdorf church were quarried there.

I love these rocks

A very beautiful sight

The Millstone. A must-visit. A beautiful old castle complex.

The gate belongs to an old customs and escort castle.

The cave has been known to locals for several centuries as the ice hole. Around 1870, the Zwickau mining association built the first access route to the cave and began marketing it for tourism. The descent to the cave floor, 6 meters below, was initially done via a carved tree trunk; later a ladder was installed. Around 1900 the entrance to the cave was barred, and for a fee you could get the key from a nearby mill. On busy weekends, a kiosk at the entrance sold refreshments. After 1945, the cave was freely accessible and was often damaged by ice formations breaking off and campfires. In 1966 the cave was declared a protected natural monument because of its unusual character, but it was not until 1988 that the cave entrance was closed again and the destruction stopped. Until 1995, access to the cave was permitted after approval by the administration of the Lusatian Mountains landscape protection area; since then, viewing has no longer been permitted due to the risk of collapse.

. Milštejn (millstone) Inconspicuous remains of a castle stand on the remains of a rock made of quartzized sandstone, which was previously quarried as raw material for making millstones. There is an interesting rock gate and some smaller caves in the rock massif.

The water from the Hamerský potok (Hammer Stream) was used throughout his life to power the hammer and the mills. However, the demand increased constantly and therefore in 1938 the Naděje reservoir (Hammerbachtalsperre) was built about 1 km upstream, under whose dam wall in the valley the remains of the old mill ditches can still be seen today. The oldest, probably from the 19th century, begins with a wooden threshold in the stream about 400 m below the dam, from where it first led into an open ditch on the right side of the stream, but then continued carved into the rock and covered with phonolite slabs was. The ditch ends after 240 m at the northern edge of Hamr, where the sawmill owned by the entrepreneurs Mitter and Weiss used to be located. Immediately below this sawmill begins the second mill ditch, through which water was channeled into the Eisenhammer in the Middle Ages, and whose upper part was converted at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries to drain the water from the Mittersche Brettmühle. This 130 m long mill ditch begins with a weir carved into the rock and its ditch was largely covered with phonolite slabs. But today it is buried in many places. Another 140 m long open mill ditch is located at the lower end of the village on the right side of the stream. Its water originally flowed in a wooden trough on the mill's water wheel and was transferred at the beginning of the 20th century into an 83 m long tunnel carved out of sandstone, at the end of which it flowed in a concrete trough to the turbine, which was the company's second sawmill Mitter and Weiss drove, was directed. Towards the end of the 50s of the 20th century, the sawmill buildings were demolished and today all that remains of them is a torso of the turbine chamber and overgrown remains of the foundation walls, behind which there is a smooth rock face with dug-in cellars and the tunnel of the old moat located.