I’m not fond of small spaces – but I do like a cave, and they don’t come much bigger than Grotta Gigante (or Giant Cave), which was featured in the 1995 Guinness Book of Records as the largest show-cave in the world. It apparently doesn’t hold that title any more having lost it to a cave in France in 2010. But it’s still stunningly, jaw-droppingly big.
Watch our YouTube video to see the cave
“Popping” up the hill
The cave itself is located outside the Italian city of Trieste, up a large hill. It’s also just a little way away from the small village of Prosecco, that lends its name to the famous Italian sparkling wine. And yes we did pop there afterwards and yes we did drink some – but back to the cave.
Grotta Gigante is, as the name suggest, pretty ruddy big. It’s central cavern is 107m high, 65m wide and 130m long. The part you visit on the regular one hour tour, isn’t even the deepest. If you have the gumption, there’s a four tour that goes further down requiring ropes and a head for heights – it’s down the big dark hole in this photo.
There are an array of stalagtites and stalagmites as you might expect, with the stalagmites being of special interest (if you’re into that sort of thing) for their “dish-pile” appearance. They sort of look like palm tree trunks made of layers. This is because the drops of water that make them fall from so high, up to 80m.
A tremendous tour
We stuck to the one hour tour, booking it beforehand to make sure we’d have a spot. Before you go on the tour, you can peruse the museum with artefacts and information about the caves.
Then it was down the many (many, many) steps with our well-informed guide, who did the whole tour in both Italian and English for the variety of guests and did a bang-up job – although she had to truncate the English translation near the end as another tour was coming through!
The cave was originally found in 1840 whilst trying to find a water source for the city. It was set-up for tours in 1905, but only really became a tourist attraction in 1957 when electric lights were installed.
It’s also a place for scientific research. The two tall thin plastic tubes going from floor to ceiling are a pair of tiltmeters used for monitoring Earth movements, fitted in 1959. They’re incredibly sensitive and have recorded four out of five greatest earthquakes in the recent 50 years.
My other half and I thought it looked not unlike a cave you’d find on a distant planet in a video game like Starfield. I really can’t describe how jaw-droppingly big it was inside. It was almost too much to fathom. I don’t even think my photos go any way to showing it.
I thoroughly recommend it if you’re in the area, although it’s worth noting there are also a lot – a lot – of steps up and down. But nearby is a nice cafe where we had a welcome drink and bite of lunch after our exertions!
Watch our YouTube video to see the cave
What do you think? Have you ever visited a huge or impressive cave? Let me know in the comments.
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