Cueva de Nerja
Interesting facts
- In a corner of the Hall of the Cataclysm, fluted columns ring with different notes when struck, and some seem to have been shaped by prehistoric people to tune them.
- The easy visitor entrance was found by tracing the thick root of a juniper down through the galleries, then blasting away a boulder that had sealed it for millennia.
- Photographs taken on a second trip by a doctor and a photographer appeared in the Málaga newspaper Sur about a hundred days after the discovery, spreading the cave's fame abroad.
- A lead amulet from al-Andalus, found in 1959, shows the cave was still used in the Middle Ages, possibly by a hermit living in its outer chambers.
- Prehistoric cave dwellers ate pine nuts and snails, and later hunted goats, rabbits, fish and even marine mammals, including species that live well offshore.
- By around 3800 BC the cave's inhabitants were weaving textiles and making more refined pottery, while parts of the cavern served as a burial chamber.
- The whole cave system covers roughly 35,000 square metres, of which only about a quarter forms the show galleries open to visitors.
- Spain's geological survey has proposed the cave as a Global Geosite, a geological site of international importance, for its fossils and landforms.
Why it is worth it
The Cave of Nerja is one of the great show caves of Europe: a system of chambers almost 5 km long in the marble hills above the Costa del Sol, formed as water dissolved the rock over some five million years. Its Hall of the Cataclysm, more than 100 metres long, is dominated by a single enormous column about 32 metres high and 13 by 7 metres at its base, often described as the largest in the world. Another chamber forms a natural amphitheatre where concerts and dance festivals are staged, with about 100 permanent seats.
The cave was rediscovered on 12 January 1959 by five young men from Maro and Nerja who had gone to catch bats in a sinkhole known as La Mina. Feeling a draught of moist air, they returned the next day with tools, broke through two stalactites and crawled into a vast gallery, where they found skeletons lying beside pottery bowls. A new entrance for visitors was opened in 1960, the cave was declared a historic-artistic monument in 1961, and in 2006 it was listed as an archaeological zone. The Upper and New Galleries, discovered in 1960 and 1969, remain closed to the public.
Archaeology is what gives Nerja its depth. People used the cave from about 25,000 years ago, first seasonally and later year-round, alternating at first with cave hyenas; later farmers kept animals, made pottery and buried their dead here. There are prehistoric paintings, including images of seals. Some organic remains near them were dated to 42,000 years in 2012, briefly suggesting Neanderthal authorship, but a 2017 study placed them at 18,000–20,000 years ago, within the Magdalenian period. A skeleton recovered from the cave is displayed in the Hall of the Nativity.
Getting there
The cave is in Maro, about 3 km from Nerja, which lies about 50 km east of Málaga; buses run from Nerja to the cave. The closest airport by straight line is Granada (GRX), about 48 km away across the mountains, but the usual gateway is Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport (AGP), about 45 minutes' drive from Nerja via the A-7.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Caves of Nerja are a series of caverns close to the town of Nerja in the Province of Málaga, Spain. Stretching for almost 5 kilometres (3.1 mi), the caverns are one of Spain's major tourist attractions. Concerts are regularly held in one of the chambers, which forms a natural amphitheatre.
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