It was formerly known as “Buca del Vento”, “Ventaiola” or “Buca di Eolo”, due to the strong wind that is felt at its entrance, which reaches up to 85 km/h. Discovered by chance, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, during research carried out on the southern slope of the Monte Corchia to trace marble veins, the Corchia Den is considered today one of the largest karst systems in Italy and Europe. An underground environment so vast that, centuries after its discovery, it remains an irresistible attraction for speleologists and explorers of the abyss.
flagship of Levigliani de Stazzema, in Versilia, The Antro del Corchia is a spectacular complex of tunnels, wells and rooms excavated by water over millions of years, in the marble heart of Monte Corchia, in Apuan Alps Regional Park.
To date they have been explored and mapped. approximately 70 km of caves and the beauty of 20 different accesses, on each side of the mountain, but the explorations continue and there is always some new wonder hidden in the marble ready to come to light.
Tour to discover the Corchia Cave
Il tourist route to discover the sinuous Antro del Corchia about two kilometers via a steel walkway, allowing visitors to safely admire some of the cave's most evocative locations, including stalactite forests e Banquet tens of meters high.
To allow access to the Corchia Cave, a tunnel was excavated 170 meter artificial tunnel, created so as not to affect the natural entrances of the cave. Continuing until you reach the actual entrance of the karst cavity, you can admire on the right a squat and conical stalagmitic concretion renamed “Gendarme”.
Then we came across the “Franosa Gallery”, a spectacular canyon dozens of meters high, which gives way to “Gallery of the English”, Named in honor of the British explorers who discovered it in the 60s. Here you can see especially suggestive concretions, with veins of rust red, white and even brown, which initially led speleologists to give it the name “Painted Gallery”.
Among the attractions to admire in the extraordinary underground complex of the Antro del Corchia are, again, the “Friday Gallery”, imposing concretion in the shape of an eagle with outstretched wings, the lake and the dense fossil concretions of the “Petrified Forest”, until reaching the spectacular “Gallery of Stalactites”, where a large pillar seems to support the entire vault and the concretions, placed one on top of the other, descend down the walls to submerge in small pools of water.
A place that the speleologist Jean-Carlo Fait defined as "an oasis of rare beauty in the middle of a world of stone, mud and water." Works of art of such a suggestive character that these rooms are difficult to compare with other underground environments spread around the world.
