This year marks the 120th anniversary of the first descent into the Dimnice Cave. Ivan Andrej Perko was the first person to descend into the "Devil's Smokehouse" in 1904, and ten years later the Slovenian Mountaineering Association from Trieste arranged it for tourist visits. Together with the surrounding area, it is an open-air museum where visitors can, among other things, learn about the contact between the karst and the flysch and listen to the story of the "Devil's Smokehouse," as it was called by the locals when they observed the mist coming out of the abyss.
The organisation ORA Krasa in Brkinov, the Municipality of Hrpelje-Kozina and the Dimnice Cave Association (Jamarsko društvo Dimnice) have organised several events in 2024 to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Dimnice Cave and the 110th anniversary of its tourist development. The main one took place on Friday, 30 August, as part of the Hrpelje-Kozina Municipality Festival. The Mayor of Hrpelje-Kozina, Saša Likavec Svetelšek, addressed the gathering in the underground of the Dimnice Cave, while Edi Fabjan from the ORA Krasa in Brkinov presented the strategic project KRAS-CARSO II, co-financed by the European Union under the Interreg VI-A Italy-Slovenia 2021-2027 Programme, which this year included activities to commemorate the honourable anniversaries of Dimnice. Franci Malečkar, a member of the Dimnice Caving Society (Jamarsko društvo Dimnice), to whom the cave's tourist development is greatly indebted, gave a surprise speech to the gathering from the ceiling of the underground entrance hall, dressed in full caving costume.
The event was accompanied by a varied music programme. In the underground, the crowd swayed to the rhythms of the Turn on Irish band, and once on the surface, the young participants of the Musikras summer orchestra school provided a pleasant atmosphere. The event was further enlivened by local catering and a varied selection of locally produced wines and beers.
As part of the celebrations, a free guided tour of the Dimnice Cave was offered on Sunday, 1 September 2024, which attracted 40 visitors from Slovenia and Italy.
