Ballıca Cave Nature Park lies near the village of Ballıca in the Pazar district of Tokat and takes its name from that village. It was declared a nature park on 23 February 2007 with an area of 483 hectares. As more visitors came, the boundary had to be widened, and on 2 July 2015 a ministerial decision enlarged the park — all of it under forest regime — to 485 hectares.
The cave is thought to have begun forming four million years ago. It runs about 680 metres in length and stands 90 to 95 metres high, with five levels and eight chambers, and in some parts it is still forming.
What sets Ballıca apart from other caves are its formations: onion-shaped stalactites, which are rarely met with, stalactites without matching stalagmites beneath them, and well-developed curtain travertines. The nature park has been placed on the UNESCO tentative list.
The plant cover is mostly broadleaf woodland — sessile and Turkey oak, oriental beech, hornbeam, maple, white willow, terebinth, juniper, hawthorn, barberry, buckthorn, dog rose, sumac — with foxglove, St John's wort, common polypody fern, teasel, thistles, lords-and-ladies and yarrow among the ground plants.
Among the amphibians here are the eastern tree frog, the marsh frog and the common and variable toads. The reptiles include the spur-thighed tortoise, the Caucasian and snake-eyed lizards, the Turkish gecko and the grass snake. Birds recorded in the park include the great tit, the stonechat, the grey heron and the marsh harrier, and there are mammals such as the fox.
The cave lies seven kilometres south of the centre of Pazar and about a kilometre south-east of Ballıca village, and you enter it through a partly levelled block of bedrock on the slope of a high, half-rocky hill. It covers ten thousand square metres. Lighting, walkways and viewing terraces were put in and it opened to visitors in 1996.
- Designated
- 23.02.2007
Getting there
- Access
- Buses run from Tokat to Pazar, and the cave is reached from Pazar by taxi.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Tokat as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from 2 °C in January to 22.5 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (59 mm) and lightest in August (9 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
