Famous caves in Georgia. Visit the New Athos Cave.

One of the resorts of the Abkhazian Black Sea coast, New Athos attracts tourists not only with climatic conditions and magnificent nature, but also with a cave located on its territory.

The Novoafonskaya cave was discovered in 1961 by the staff of the Institute of Geography. Vakhushti Batonishvili of the Academy of Sciences of Georgia. However, it took years to thoroughly study the underground "city" and walk through its labyrinths.

Until 1975, the halls of the Athos Cave (it is also called the Anakop and Iver Cave) were inaccessible to visitors. But in the mentioned year, the cave railway was put into operation, along which tourists can travel to the underground kingdom. A bridge supported on stilts (125 meters high) connects various sections of the cave. In the 80s of the XX century, the cave was visited annually by more than a million people.

The cave is embedded in dense layers of limestone rocks with numerous crevices and consists of vertical (total depth — 183 meters) and horizontal (total depth — 3285 m) funnels. These two sections are connected by a narrow and low passage — the "Arsen Gate".

In the horizontal part of the cave, rather spacious and high halls stand out, to which Georgian speleologists gave the following names: "Abkhazia", "Hall of Georgian Speleologists", "Cathedral", "Sukhumi", "Iberia", "Tbilisi", "Hall of the Helictites", etc. Each of these halls is decorated with stalactites of various sizes, "curtains", petrified waterfalls.

The "Hall of Georgian Speleologists" is the largest cave hall in Europe. Its maximum length is 260 meters, width — 20-75 meters, height — from 30 to 50 meters. One of the halls — "Iveria" ("Youth Hall") is distinguished by unusual acoustics. Concerts were held here in the summer. As for the Sukhumi hall, it is so difficult to get to it that even today it is inaccessible to tourists.