Curtomartino Cave

The Curtomartino Cave is located in the countryside of Acquaviva delle Fonti, in an area once dominated by immense woods, which today is characterized by the presence of a priority conservation habitat for the European Union. This Cave is one of the many jewels of our territory of which still little is known. Nature and history meet in Curtomartino, a unique place full of charm and suggestions.

The ancient wood, of which only a few isolated specimens of oaks remain today, has given way to a new, semi-natural landscape, yet equally rich in life.

Sparkling graminaceae, aromatic herbs and carpets of orchids alternate over the seasons outside the cave and saturate the air with inebriant scents, color the surrounding landscape with ever new shades and accompany the visitor in a complete sensory experience, in a unique path that starts from the origins of the world and crosses the fundamental stages of human history.

Visiting the cave is like reading a book, made of stone, where nature has described its creation. The Curtomartino Cave is not only an extraordinary example of a karst phenomenon, full of glittering concretions, mighty columns, stalactites and stalagmites that adorn the Cave like a small cathedral of rock. This Cave is much more. It is a site of significant archaeological interest that, during the research, has returned important evidence of a human presence dating back to the period of considerable evolutionary and cultural ferment that was the Upper Paleolithic.

The remarkable amount of findings discovered during the excavations joins the frame of linear graphemes and zoomorphic drawings, which constitute a complex of rock and portable art of great importance and make Curtomartino a unicum of our territory, a little big treasure chest waiting to be discovered.