Grotta Gigante

A few weekends ago we visited the aptly named Grotta Gigante (Giant Cave) in the also aptly named Borgo Grotta Gigante (Village of the Giant Cave). This is the largest tourist cave in the world and with a volume of 600 thousand cubic meters it can fit lots of other large things inside, for example St Peter's Basilica, or 240 Olympic size swimming pools or about 42 billion chocolate truffles...mmm...chocolate.

The cave takes your breath away both because of the beautiful and odd shapes and the shear size. However, you can't help but notice the damage that humans have caused. A lot of the surfaces are covered with soot from the acetylene lamps and candles that were used in the past to light up the cave. Those have been replaced by electric lights, however the electric lights prompt algae growth on the rocks. You really can't win unless the cave is closed to visitors, then the cave wins and we can't be having that.

Tours run every half hour or so and there is a warning before you go in that there are 500 steps down...and 500 back up again. I think a few people on our tour would have done well to heed this sign. The guide gives the tour in Italian but also has tapes in other languages which they play after each spiel. The English tape was a very English sounding lady, quite amusing.

There are a number of experiments run in the cave, mainly to do with the geosciences. One consists of two pendulums which are suspended from the ceiling of the cave and hang to the floor (~ 100 m). These are used to measure very small movements of the Earth's crust and can even pick up the tiny tidal motions of the Earth surface. Very cool.

Outside the cave is a little fast food place, however, despite the sign we couldn't find any bat and ball games, or insects from the gryllidae family. After visiting the cave we went to the gallery of Paulo Hrovatin. This fellow makes beautiful stone sculptures which I've never seen the likes of before, well worth a look.