The Caves of Frasassi are underground caves that are located in the municipality of Genga.
The complex is located within the Regional Natural Park of the Gola della Rossa and Frasassi and their discovery dates back to September 25, 1971, thanks to the speleological group of the CAI of Ancona.
The following year the Consorzio Frasassi was established by the municipality and the Province of Ancona, with the aim of safeguarding and enhancing the complex of the Caves.
Inside the karst cavities you can see natural sculptures, created by calcareous stratifications over 190 million years thanks to the work of water and rock. The water, flowing on the limestone, melts small amounts of limestone and falling to the ground, during a trickle that lasts for millennia, deposits and forms concretions of considerable size and shapes sometimes even curious.
The concretions are divided into stalagmites (columns that grow from the bottom to the top) and stalactites (which instead descend from the ceiling of the cavities).
The shapes and the dimensions of these natural works have stimulated the fantasy of the speleologists, who after having discovered them have “baptized” them in a curious way.
Among the most famous stalactites and stalagmites are: the “Giants”, the “Camel” and the “Dromedary”, the “Orsa” (a boulder that after the age-old erosion has taken the vague form of a bear), the “Madonnina”, the “Sword of Damocles” (the largest stalactite, of 7.40 m in height and 150 cm in diameter), the “small waterfalls of Niagara”, the “Fetta di pancetta” (light pink color) ) and the “Lard of lard” (completely white, due to calcite), the “Obelisk” (15 meters high stalagmite in the center of Room 200), the “Organ pipes” (conical-lamellar concretions that owe the their name to the fact that if they are hit from the outside they resound), the “Castle of the witches”.
Inside the caves there are also ponds where the water of dripping and “wells” stagnates, deep cylindrical cavities up to 25 m that can collect water or convey it towards lower karst planes, also inside they do not penetrate no light beam, therefore the lighting is completely artificial and the used one is cold white light, since it does not produce heat towards the concretions.The only light different from the white light is the light blue, used to highlight the wells and ponds.
grotte@frasassi.com
