History
The cave was first explored by Antonio Federico Lindner in 1840. At the time, the karst behind Trieste was being searched for underground water from the Timavo river so as to be able to plan the city's aqueduct. In 1897, it was fully mapped by Andrea Perko, in 1905, properly equipped for guided tours and, in 1908, inaugurated. After World War I, ownership went to the Julian Alpine Society. Tourism only really began in 1957, when electricity was installed, unveiling new perspectives and details.
Read more about this topic: Grotta Gigante
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)