The footprints of the cave bear
In the hinterland of Borghetto Santo Spirito, near the medieval village of Toirano, the Toirano Caves are among the most beautiful and important show caves in Italy, both for their spectacular formations and for their extraordinary prehistoric traces. The main cave, the Grotta della Bàsura, the "witch's cave" in dialect, was explored in 1950, when some young men of the village broke through a narrow passage and discovered a series of chambers that had remained sealed for thousands of years, with the traces of their last visitors still intact on the ground.
In the Cimitero degli Orsi, the Bears' Cemetery, lie hundreds of bones and skulls of the cave bear, a huge extinct bear that used the cave for hibernation and died there, with the marks of its claws on the walls. In other rooms, scientists found footprints of prehistoric humans, including children, preserved in the clay, together with handprints and knee prints and lumps of clay thrown at the walls, the traces of a group who explored the cave by torchlight about 14,000 years ago, one of the most important testimonies of its kind in the world. The visit continues through rooms rich in stalactites, stalagmites, columns and draperies, such as the Sala dei Misteri, and then into the adjacent Grotta di Santa Lucia Inferiore, with its splendid concretions and crystals. The guided tour lasts about an hour and a quarter, at a constant temperature of about 16 degrees. The village of Toirano, with its medieval lanes, has an ethnographic museum.
Tip: wear comfortable shoes, the paths are damp; the cave is pleasant on hot summer days and rainy ones.
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