✨ Sablino Caves (Left-Bank Cave)

Ульяновка, Советский пр., 205А

19th-century galleries where quartz sand for glass was mined: underground halls, a lake and bat colonies; it's +8 °C inside all year round.

Most of the workings appeared from the second half of the 19th century, when the growing city of Petersburg needed a lot of glass.
The Left-Bank Cave is one of four large caves at Sablino; the others are known locally as Zhemchuzhnaya ("Pearl"), Shtany ("Trousers") and Verevka ("Rope").
Four species of Myotis bats from the Leningrad Oblast Red Data Book hibernate in the Left-Bank Cave, as well as the northern bat and the brown long-eared bat.
After mining ended, the galleries began to collapse and flood, and the once-continuous workings broke up into separate labyrinths.
In 1923 the village of Sablino was renamed Ulyanovka in memory of the Ulyanov family's stay here.

Part of these routes