Drachenhöhle

Often caves are difficult to access, blocked or gate, or you just don't know about them. Drachenhöhle near Zürich is, however, both well known and easy to access. It is not big, but has very interesting shapes and well worth the visit!

Here's is the interesting shape. What do you make of it?

Drachenhöhle is in Küsnacht, on the southeastern outskirts of Zürich. The coordinates are N 47.325661 E 8.608386. It is located in the hilly forests of Der Küsnachter Marroniwald, a park. It is maybe ten or twenty meters uphill on the valley side, above a small river.

The cave opens with two eyes starting at you, separated by a big "nose". The left eye is a small cave, the main cave is behind the right eye. There's a connection between the two behind the nose, but it didn't look big enough for a human to pass through (to me).

Caves behind both eyes are walkable and easy. But from the right eye to the right there's a narrow tunnel than continues upwards. That's a lot of fun to crawl through. Though, as I was coming straight from a conference my clothing wasn't really meant for crawling on my stomach. Fortunately I managed to clean myself enough to be accepted for the taxi ride back to the hotel....

My measurements say the main line is 12 meters long, and the narrow side tunnel to the right is 4.5 meters, so 16.5 meters total length. In addition there's indeed a tiny hole the the left cave, but I left it unaccounted for th length, as I wasn't sure it was passable. And there's an unconnected side cave on the far left and above the narrow side tunnel to the right.

I made a scan of the cave with my iPhone 14 Pro (new model with more memory, albeit bought used). The 3D model can be loaded here, viewed here on your browser screen, and the full high-resolution map is here. Below are some excerpts, starting with the plan view (horizontal) map, a vertical cross section of the main line to the cave, and a screenshot of the model:

Photos:

There were three holes total, the above pictures are all about the biggest one. Facing the cave, the biggest one is on the center. To the left is the second hole:

And the third hole is to the right and up a bit:

The hike to the cave is through a park. Clouds were beautiful on my hike:

This article has also been published at Planetcaver.net here. Read the full Planetskier series at planetskier.net, urban exploration stories from theurbanexplorer.net, and other underground stories from planetcaver.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. All rights reserved.