Castellana Caves



 It was overcast today and so we decided to go underground and take a two hour guided tour of the Castellana Grotto, which is considered to be the most important and impressive cave complex in Italy.  I booked the 12:00 English speaking tour on their website and arrived 45 minutes before the tour started only to find out that I misread the information and the tour started at 11:00.  So we took the Italian tour at 12:00.  No matter, it was an unbelievable experience and we had an English brochure to help explain what we were seeing.

In 1938 the Provincial Tourist Board of Bari wanted to see if there were caves in their jurisdiction that could be turned into tourist attractions and hired a cave specialist to check-out the area.  He found La Grave (The Deep) thanks to a natural "skylight" in the ceiling and dropped 60m (197ft) to the floor of this massive cave.  He not only found "Le Grave" but an entire underground maze that is 3.4km (2miles) in length and took two years to map.

Rita heading down the 27m (88ft) man-made tunnel staircase to the "Le Grave"

The "Le Grave" is overwhelmingly massive.  You can see the people walking on the floor of the cave to get a perspective of its size.  Unfortunately, this is the only cave where you can take pictures.  I did manage to sneak a few images though

This cave system started to form 90 million years ago through an underground river slowly eroding the limestone to form these caves.  The floor of the caves are now 122m (400ft) below the surface.


Rain water filtering through the rock has formed amazing stalagmites, stalactites and incredibly delicate looking crystal formations in a variety of colors depending on the minerals the water was flowing through.

At the end of the cave system lies the White Cave, the most beautiful of all the caves and said to be the most shining cave in the world.  Photos cannot do it justice.  The whole cave is shimmering in white Alabaster.  Once full of drip water, the floor and walls are now adorned with crystals.  Every corner of the cave seems filled with white translucent stalagmites.  It was stunning to see and not a word was spoken by anyone in our group as we stood in awe of what was in front of us.  What a way to end the tour and appreciate the true wonder of nature.


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