Cave
The enormous hall is 107 m (351 ft) high, 130 m (430 ft) long and 65 m (213 ft) large. A steep yet comfortable path with atmospheric electric lighting allows the visitor to spend about 45 minutes in this impressive underground world with its rich calcite concretions, the highest of which is no less than 12 m (39 ft) high.
Its exceptional spatial characteristics, and the constant temperatures in the giant cave throughout the year, have led to the placement of two geodetic pendula (which hang down from about 100m above 100 m (330 ft) and are the longest in the world)) and other scientific instruments.
Read more about this topic: Grotta Gigante
Famous quotes containing the word cave:
“The use of symbols has a certain power of emancipation and exhilaration for all men. We seem to be touched by a wand, which makes us dance and run about happily, like children. We are like persons who come out of a cave or cellar into the open air. This is the effect on us of tropes, fables, oracles, and all poetic forms. Poets are thus liberating gods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Under the one word “house” are included the schoolhouse, the almshouse, the jail, the tavern, the dwellinghouse; and the meanest shed or cave in which men live contains elements of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands the entire and perfect house.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)