Valamar Blog

Romualdo from Ravena was an interesting persona. Sometime around the beginning of the last century, around 1000 A.D., he came to Istria and built a monastery of St. Mihovil near village Klostar in the vicinity of Lim bay. There were many tales about Romualdo among the people. When this former Benedictine arrived to Istria, he had already had a reputation of being a seer and a miracle worker. Soon after the completion of the monastery, he decided to isolate himself completely and to hide from the secular life so he became a hermit in the true sense of the word.

His first stop as a hermit was Captain’s Cave (Kapetanska spilja) near the coast of Lima bay, a location which was more accessible to the inquisitive people and where he lingered for a short while as de didn’t get the necessary solitude and peace he wanted. The next stop was the place that was later named after him, and the place the local people avoided due to the belief that all sorts of creatures of dark and evil forces lurk around it. Romualdo was the first person to enter the cave, where he stayed until 1005 A. D. He maintained contact with the world through one shepherd.

Romualdo’s Cave can certainly be called an interesting caving phenomenon. It is located on a northern slope of a hill with the church of St Martin, 105 meters long, with a few entirely passable halls, of which several are high up to six meters. The temperature is on the level of 15ºC throughout the entire year. Bones from the Pleistocene period were found in the cave, which proofs that man dwelled there in the Old Stone Age. It is richly adorned with cave ornaments, and the interesting fact is that the ornaments are all placed on the left side of the cave, while the right is completely blank.