Grotte de Sare

The Sare caves were born of the slow work of water, millennium after millennium... It all began 100 million years ago. A warm sea covered today's Basque Country. Fifty million years later, the earth's crust folded to form the Pyrenees. Seabed sediments were thrust to the surface and turned into sandstone and limestone. Despite its hardness, limestone is dissolved and worn by water, and little by little runoff hollowed out the mountain... The largest of Sare's natural cavities, the Lezea cave, opens with an immense entrance extended by hundreds of metres of galleries. The first level, the former bed of an underground river, sheltered the fearsome cave bears. The upper galleries were a refuge for humans.

← Other sites in Pyrénées-Atlantiques