You don’t need to be a professional speleologist to visit these wonderful karst formations and descend hundreds of metres under the ground: you just have to take a few steps inside this casemate!
Once a military site, now the San Michele Casemate has become an incredibly impressive space. Over the centuries water has penetrated the ceiling of this vault excavated inside the walls, filling the space originally occupied by cannons and ammunition with beautiful and long stalactites and stalagmites! The result is an incredibly fascinating and easy to visit natural spectacle!
Just a short distance from Sant’Agostino you can see an opening that gently leads underground. It is the entrance to the San Michele Casemate, a space previously used to house cannons and soldiers who were defending the city, and is now invaded by an incredible amount of limestone concretions, a spectacle of nature enhanced by a careful lighting installation. The fascination is also in the dimensions that these stalactites and stalagmites have reached in such a short time. If normally to grow this length (up to 3 metres) they employ thousands of years, here everything has happened in "only" five centuries. This is due to the large amount of lime used by manufacturers to seal the stones that make up the casemate, which melted due to water infiltration and accelerated the entire formation process.
You don’t need to be a professional speleologist to visit these wonderful karst formations and descend hundreds of metres under the ground: you just have to take a few steps inside this casemate!
Once a military site, now the San Michele Casemate has become an incredibly impressive space. Over the centuries water has penetrated the ceiling of this vault excavated inside the walls, filling the space originally occupied by cannons and ammunition with beautiful and long stalactites and stalagmites! The result is an incredibly fascinating and easy to visit natural spectacle!
Just a short distance from Sant’Agostino you can see an opening that gently leads underground. It is the entrance to the San Michele Casemate, a space previously used to house cannons and soldiers who were defending the city, and is now invaded by an incredible amount of limestone concretions, a spectacle of nature enhanced by a careful lighting installation. The fascination is also in the dimensions that these stalactites and stalagmites have reached in such a short time. If normally to grow this length (up to 3 metres) they employ thousands of years, here everything has happened in "only" five centuries. This is due to the large amount of lime used by manufacturers to seal the stones that make up the casemate, which melted due to water infiltration and accelerated the entire formation process.
