AT A GLANCE
Why go?
High on the karst plateau above Castello Tesino, in Italy's Autonomous Province of Trento, the Bus de la Lora is the only show cave in Trentino fitted out for visitors. Reached by a forest trail and explored by guided torchlight, it threads for roughly 400–450 metres through pale dolomitic rock that water has carved into stalactites, stalagmites, columns and draperies of bewildering shape.↗↗
Beyond the scenery, the cave keeps a singular treasure: hollowed marks on the walls attributed to the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) of the Ice Age—the only such traces preserved in any Trentino cavern. A guided tour here is less a quick walk-through than a half-day underground expedition: an approach hike, an hour and a half below ground with a guide, and a return climb to the car park.↗↗
What makes it special
Local dialect always called it Bus de la Lora—"lora" meaning funnel—and residents of the nearby hamlet know it as the grotta di Valnuvola. The funnel name is said to echo the strange sound made when floodwaters of the Senaiga stream are drawn down into the cave's natural hollows. First explored in 1927 by caver Bortolo Da Rugna during surveys along the stream, and scientifically studied in 1952, the cavity opens at about 960 metres above sea level and runs largely level through the mountain, with passages that swell and narrow and a scatter of side chambers the water excavated.
