Castelcivita caves lie nearby Cilento's National Park and not far from Vallo di Diano, in the province of Salerno. It is one of the largest speleological areas in Southern Italy, with its 1700 meters of touristic way out of a total of 5000 meters. The underground cavity system, known as "Devil's caves", "Spartacu's caves" or "Prince of Piemonte's caves" opens at 94 meter of altitude, between the banks of the river Calore and Sout-Ovest coast of the Alburni mountains. It shows us a suggestive scene of galleries, wide spaces and straits, dug by the action of the millenary karst erosion. Castelcivita caves develop along a single branch from which, short secondary ramifications branch off in more than one point. The hypogeal system is divided into two different parts separated by a positive drop of about 5 meters named "Jump".
The gone back one of the big step of the "Jump " it concurs to pass from a properly tourist distance, to a distance outside path that, through spectacular atmospheres, adorns of imposing and eccentrics limestone formations, leads till a wide defined water river basin "Terminale lake" In 1972 following many speleological explorations, Castelcivita caves earn a great paleontological prominence thanks to the discovering and the locating of interesting archaeological deposits just at the cavity entry.
Discovered fossil remains and stone tools are the evidence of the human presence dating back to 40.000 years ago. The charm of the testimonies related to the habits of life of the prehistoric man and the suggestion of extraordinary naturalistic phenomenon, realize, inside the caves of Castelcivita, the enchantment of a surreal active underground landscape still, in which the incessant one to drip some times, keeping on forming stalactites and stalagmites, it accompanies the walk of numerous visitors during the whole year.


(souce: www.grottedicastelcivita.it)