Teufelshöhle

The Teufelshöhle is a natural karst cave and the largest of the roughly 1000 caves in Franconian Switzerland. It consists of several large halls connected to one another by narrow, gallery-like passages driven by mining methods during the cave's development. Including all side passages, the galleries and the shafts sunk for the cave's development, the length of the cave is about 3000 metres. The show-cave section is about 1700 metres long, of which about 800 are walkable on guided tours. The cave entrance is a 25-metre-wide and 14-metre-high portal, one of the largest cave entrances in Germany, and has been known for a long time. This cave portal formerly ended after about 85 metres of depth and was called the Teufelsloch.

The dripstone cave has rich speleothem decoration with stately stalagmites and stalactites and is regarded as one of the most beautiful show caves in Germany.

Hans Brand of Bayreuth, a geologist and mining engineer, later an SS-Standartenführer, broke through an approximately nine-metre-thick closing wall, formed by a collapse, in the Teufelsloch in 1922 and discovered dripstone-decorated cave sections, which were made passable by August 1923 and provisionally opened to visitors. In a further development measure, from 1923 onward additional cave chambers were opened up within eight years and connected to one another by galleries totalling about 300 metres in length. At Pentecost in 1931 the Teufelshöhle was opened to the public for complete viewing.

The Teufelshöhle is a member of the Erlebniswelt Jurahöhle. With more than 140000 visitors a year, the Teufelshöhle, which is operated by the Zweckverband Teufelshöhle, is among the most visited show caves in Europe. In Germany only the Atta-Höhle in Attendorn has comparable visitor numbers. The Teufelshöhle is used for various purposes. Thus, alongside the regular guided tours, since 1994 the event series Kultur in der Teufelshöhle has taken place several times in the summer months in the entrance hall. In a side gallery, since 1986 the Therapiezentrum Teufelshöhle has been located for the application of speleotherapy within the framework of therapeutic cures. In a further side section, since 1970 the Forschungsgruppe Höhle und Karst Franken has maintained the only cave laboratory in Germany.