We present high-resolution spectroscopy of I 2 vapor that is loaded and trapped within the core of a hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF). We compare the observed spectroscopic features to those observed in a conventional iodine cell and show that the saturation characteristics differ significantly. Despite the confined geometry it was still possible to obtain sub-Doppler features with a spectral width of ∼ 6 MHz with very high contrast. We provide a simple theory which closely reproduces all the key observations of the experiment.