Caverna Bianca

The white aragonite chamber at the end of the long cave tour

The Caverna Bianca — "the White Cave" — is the climax of the long tour of the Grotte di Castellana and one of the most photographed natural sights in southern Italy. It is a small chamber, but the walls, ceiling, and stalactites are almost entirely composed of pure white aragonite, so pale that when the lights are turned up the room appears to glow from within.

The cave is reached only via the full two-kilometre tour, not the short one. Photography is not allowed inside the chamber, which preserves both the surprise and the integrity of the very delicate crystals. Allow two hours for the full tour from arrival to exit, and book ahead in summer.

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A story
The Caverna Bianca was not even known to the original 1938 explorers — it was reached only in 1940, two years after Anelli's first descent, when speleologists pushed through a low gap at the end of the system and found themselves in a chamber whose walls were almost pure white. The unusually pure aragonite is thought to have crystallised from extremely slow water seepage over hundreds of thousands of years.

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