Evaporitic Karst and Caves of Northern Apennines
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
In Emilia-Romagna, on the northern Apennines, gypsum and other evaporite rocks have dissolved into a karst landscape. The evaporites were laid down in the Triassic, about 200 million years ago, and in the Messinian Salinity Crisis about 6 million years ago; the present caves formed over roughly the last 500,000 years. Within the nine component parts there are more than 900 caves in a small area, over 100 km of passages in total, reaching 265 metres below the surface.
About 2,000 years ago the Romans cut transparent crystals from some of the caves to set in window frames in place of glass. Academic study began in the 16th century, which makes this the first and best-studied evaporite karst in the world. Ulisse Aldrovandi of Bologna described and drew speleothems from a cave near the city in the Musaeum metallicum, published in 1648, and in 1872 Giuseppe Scarabelli surveyed the Re Tiberio cave in the Vena del Gesso and published the first survey of a gypsum cave in Italy.
The Spipola, Acquafredda and Prete Santo system runs for 11.5 km. The property was inscribed in 2023, and the Monte Tondo quarry near the Re Tiberio cave is named as its main threat.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).