We’re in San Giovanni d’Antro, in the municipality of Pulfero in the Natisone valleys. Today we’ll be visiting the beautiful natural cave that gives this village its name. We park the car on the square behind the church and from there a path leads to the stone staircase set into the mountainside. We realise it’s just as well we left the pushchair at home!

After climbing the 86 steep steps we reach an observation terrace. The entrance to the cave is here and we immediately meet the caretaker of this enchanting place, Maria, who has always keenly devoted herself to maintaining the site and welcoming visitors. The cave is a complex place: it has been used for many different purposes over the centuries: a lonely hermitage, an impregnable fort and a place of worship and pilgrimage. Therefore, today visitors are offered a historical/artistic tour of the altar chamber and side chapels, or a nature-based tour along the 300 metres of the fascinating caving route in the labyrinthine underground. A real adventure for our kids!

For children (I’d advise from 4 years upward) it’s like going bear hunting (they’ve put a fine reproduction of one at the entrance). We don helmets and venture into the bowels of the mountain. The passages are narrow and tortuous; we grown-ups have to duck down and look where we step, but the children seem like expert explorers. The galleries are well lit, but I suggest you take a torch with you, anyway, to make the adventure even more realistic! During the tour you can see crystal-clear water whose flow creates stalactites and fills the pools that are home to niphargus, a kind of small crustacean that loves the darkness.

Our exploration over, we go down to see the waterfall formed by water from the cave; nearby is an area of grassy ground where we take off our Indiana Jones outfits and unfurl a tablecloth for our picnic.