The stalactic cave
Norsk utgave (Norwegian edition)
If you ever get to Antiparos or Paros, you really have to take a trip to the cave on Antiparos. It is really worth seeing. The cave is about 100m deep and very large in volume.
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Where it is and how to get there.
In all the guide books it says that it can be quite an effort to get to this cave, and that’s how it used to be. The cave lies about 13 km south of Antiparos village and almost at the top of the more than 200m high mountain. Before, the easiest way to get there was to take the boat to the beach which lies below the cave. From there, you could either go up on foot or by donkey. I can imagine both could be quite tiring, especially in the intense heat of this mountain region. Luckily it is not like this any more. For years now there has been a cart track leading up to the cave, but it has been in a very bad condition, making it a bit trying even to sit on the bus to the cave. In recent years a lot of money has been invested in improving this road, and the summer of 1996 the road was ready, so now it is very easy to get to the cave. There is a bus from the quay in Antiparos once every hour, and the bus stops only 100m from the entrance to the cave.
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The cave.
It is easy to enter, and there are steps going down, so you can get all the way to the bottom of the cave. There are many hundred steps (I have read somewhere that there are 365) so you feel it on the way up again. But fortunately it is cool inside the cave and you can buy cold drinks and ice cream from the kiosk outside. It must have taken some effort to get down and up again when you only had ropes and lanterns to help you. The cave was "fixed up" for the summer of 1995, with proper lighting and new railings of stainless steel, as the old ones had rusted away.
Unfortunately I am no expert on stalactites and stalagmites as these things are called which hang down and grow upwards, but I know that this is a wonderful sight and I visit every time I am in Antiparos.
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History
The cave has been known and famous for over 2000 years. Unfortunately, it has suffered as a result, with many people taking "souvenirs" away with them. The worst were perhaps the Russians who cut down huge stalactites and took them with them to museums in Russia. But also others have helped themselves. During the 2nd world war, even grenades were thrown down into the cave, because the cave has been used throughout history as a place of refuge. There is an inscription describing a Christmas mass in 1673, held in honour of the French ambassador to Constantinople, Count Nouantelle, who paid 500 people from Antiparos and Paros to take part.
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| © Jan Bergtun, 3. March 1998 | Updated, 02.07.2007 |
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