| It is a natural cavern on a rocky wall sheer above the river Orta. More tha 7,000 years ago, Neolithic people found and occupied it as a shelter. About one thousand years later, the so-called Ripoli culture used it as a sacred place, where ritual ceremonies were celebrated. Circles of stones have been found inside the cave; they marked the point were holes had been dug; the contained animal and human bones: two children and a baby. About 4,000 years ago, the cave lost its sacred function and people started to live there inside wooden huts; then, it was definitively abandoned after one thousand years. |