Frasassi and the Gola della Rossa
Thirty kilometres of caves under a gorge, and a chamber that would hold Milan cathedral.
In 1971 some cavers from Ancona lowered themselves into a crack above Genga and found an enormous void. It was the Abisso Ancona: two hundred metres by a hundred and eighty, a hundred and twenty high, large enough to hold Milan cathedral. It is the first chamber of the Frasassi complex, which today counts more than thirty kilometres of explored galleries.
The tourist route is a kilometre and a half long, takes just over an hour and is done with a guide. Inside it is a constant fourteen degrees with ninety per cent humidity: you want a jumper even in August, and closed shoes.
Outside the caves
The gorge they open into is the Gola della Rossa, a nature reserve cut by the river Sentino. On the wall, inside a cave on a sheer face, stands the Valadier chapel, built in 1828 at the wish of Pope Leo XII, and just below it the Romanesque hermitage of Santa Maria infra Saxa.
Genga is half an hour from Senigallia and Jesi, an hour from Ancona. Cave tickets are worth booking in summer and at weekends. At Christmas the gorge hosts a living nativity with hundreds of participants.