grotta di Ispinigoli

Most caves are entered from the side; Ispinigoli is entered from above. A long staircase drops into a single colossal chamber hollowed out of the limestone hills near Dorgali, in eastern Sardinia, and at its centre stands a column of stone about 38 metres tall, joining floor and vault. It grew drop by drop as a stalagmite rose to meet the ceiling, and it is counted among the tallest cave columns known anywhere. The whole hall feels like a stone cathedral built around a single pillar.

The main chamber is roughly 80 metres across and some 35 metres deep, its floor heaped with great blocks that fell from the roof over thousands of years. Around the giant column the walls are dressed in curtains, flowstone and smaller stalagmites, and the true scale of the space only reveals itself step by step on the way down. The cave belongs to the Supramonte, the rugged karst upland of central-eastern Sardinia, and it is just the visible part of a far larger system: underground passages link it with the caves of San Giovanni Su Anzu, a network that cavers have followed for many kilometres.

On one side of the hall a shaft known as the Abisso delle Vergini, the Abyss of the Virgins, plunges about 60 metres further down. Local tradition holds that young women were sacrificed there in antiquity, and the story gave the shaft its name. Archaeologists read the human bones and jewellery found at its bottom more soberly, as burials of the Nuragic people of Bronze Age Sardinia. The same depths yielded remains of Megalenhydris, an extinct giant otter that once lived only on this island.

For generations shepherds used the sheltered terrace at the entrance as a pen for their flocks. Speleologists began exploring the cave in the 1950s, and in 1974 it was fitted with paths and lighting and opened to visitors. It lies in the municipality of Dorgali, a town on the eastern edge of the Supramonte whose seaside hamlet, Cala Gonone, looks out over the Gulf of Orosei. Archaeological finds from the cave are kept in Dorgali's own museum.

Getting there

The cave lies a few kilometres north-east of Dorgali, just off the SS125 road between Dorgali and Orosei. Nuoro, the provincial capital, is about 23 km away in a straight line. The nearest airport is Olbia Costa Smeralda (OLB), about 65 km to the north, from where the area is reached by road down the east coast of Sardinia.